Banking Happiness

Faraji-Rad and Lee determined that  “Merely anticipating a future sad event motivates consumers to ‘accumulate happiness’ in order to enhance their ability to cope with the anticipated sadness later—a phenomenon that we call banking happiness.  To bank happiness, consumers not only choose positive stimuli over non-positive stimuli when given the choice. . .  Consumers bank happiness because of the lay theory that happiness is a resource that can be accumulated (i.e., banked) and consumed later.  . . .  believing that happiness is bankable increases consumers’ engagement with positive stimuli when anticipating sadness, possibly boosting the hedonic [pleasure-related] utility [value] consumers obtain from the positive stimuli and helping them to build a stronger buffer against the negative stimuli later.”

Ali Faraji-Rad and Leonard Lee.  “Banking Happiness.”  Journal of Consumer Research, in press, ucab066, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucab066