My favorite positive psychology study is one published in Science by Liz Dunn and her colleagues at UBC. They found that people who spent their salary bonuses on other people were happier than those who spent it on themselves. And they did an experiment in which they gave students five dollars or twenty dollars and instructed them to either spend the money on themselves or on someone else. Like rational economists, other students guessed that it would make people happiest to get the larger amount and to spend it on themselves. But that is not what happened. Instead, the students were happiest when they bought someone else a gift, regardless of the amount. These findings are part of a heartening wave of new research suggesting that human beings are chock-full of mechanisms designed to make us feel good when we cement our bonds with those around us.

Excerpt from Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life by Douglas T. Kenrick

Finally, graduation is upon us. In last three years we have slaved away and worked relentlessly to achieve one key goal: to graduate. But now that University is over, a whole new world opens up. How are we to direct our lives from here on; especially after spending 17+ years in an education system, which to a certain extent did the directing for us?

As we enter the ‘real world’, we are invited, or rather, are required to consider the bigger picture and direct our own lives. The best way of doing this is by setting our own goals and working towards new aspirations. Goals will continue to be particularly important in this journey because:

Ample evidence links goals to well-being. Goals can provide structure, meaning, identity, and a sense of purpose, and progress towards goals results in positive affective states such as hope, enthusiasm, and pride.

(Segerstrom and Nes, 2006)

In other words, goals are good for our psychological health. But what kind of goals should we pursue after graduation? Ideally the ones that lead to the highest level of life satisfaction and subjective well-being. Many desire money, material wealth, image, and fame, but there is a ‘dark side to the American dream’, as Kasser and Ryan (1993) found. In a study where they interviewed college students, they concluded:

When goals for financial success exceed those for affiliation, self-acceptance, and community feeling, worse psychological adjustment was found.

(Kasser and Ryan, 1993)

Therefore personal growth, close relationships and community involvement should not be ignored as we venture out into the real world. Such aspirations, labeled by Kasser and Ryan (1996) as intrinsic goals, help satisfy our basic psychological needs, which are:

Autonomy

a sense of choice and free will




Competence

effective interaction with the environment




Relatedness

connecting with others and being cared about




(Niemic, Ryan, and Deci, 2009)

Extrinsic goals such as money and fame are not as conducive to these needs and so we must be cautious, for the single-minded pursuit of extrinsic aspirations could lead to a very unsatisfactory life.

Not to say that pursuing money is totally unhealthy. If you want to be rich, just make sure that it is for the ‘right’ reasons i.e. the money facilitates an increase in autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The wrong reason would be an attempt to use the money to show off, or to garner some form of external validation about yourself.

I guess this essay applies to me more than anyone else. In fact, I wrote it firstly for me because I have a big financial goal. After doing some reading and reflection, I have adjusted my goals accordingly.

Fellow graduates, as we set out to begin our adult lives, let us make sure that if we are to pursue anything in life, that it leads to an increased sense of free will (autonomy), personal growth (competence), community involvement and good relationships (relatedness).

References:

Kasser, Tim, and Richard M. Ryan. “A Dark Side of the American Dream: Correlates of Financial Success as a Central Life Aspiration.” Journal of Personality and Social Pyschology (1993) 65, no. 2: 410-422.

Kasser, Tim, and Richard M. Ryan. “Further Examining the American Dream: Differential Correlates of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Goals.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22, no. 3 (1996): 280-287.

Niemiec, Christopher P., Richard M. Ryan, and Edward L. Deci. “The Path Taken: Consequences of Attaining Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations in Post-college Life.” Journal of Research in Personality 43, no. 3 (2009): 291-306.

Segerstrom, Suzanne C., and Lise Solberg Nes. “When Goals Conflict But People Prosper: The Case of Dispositional Optimism.” Journal of Research in Personality 40, no. 5 (2006): 675-693.