Why we just can’t resist keeping up with Joneses
IT is a feeling many will be familiar with... that sense of envy when the neighbours roll up in an expensive new car or announce they have j ust booked a world cruise.
But if you’re feeling slightly guilty about your i nstinctive desire to go one better, don’t worry. It’s not your fault.
The urge to ‘ keep up with the Joneses’ is hard-wired in the human brain, claim scientists.
We instinctively make judgments on the value of material possessions such as houses or cars by making comparisons with what our peers own.
Those comparisons can determine how happy or successful we deem ourselves to be.
And, according to Professor Nick Chater, they also form the ‘dark side of consumerism’.
‘There is no absolute value to a house,’ the professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Busi-
‘We are on a
treadmill’
ness School points out. ‘We come to a price by comparing it with other houses in our street.
‘Everybody values their car or house relative to other cars or houses. That means as everybody gets wealthier they get a nicer house or car.’
But because we continue think comparatively, we do not actually gain any benefit for these efforts – in other words, we do not feel any happier because we still have the third nicest car among our friends, Professor Chater explains.
‘Some economists are now concerned that, as a society, we are in danger of putting enormous resources into competitions with each other that are getting us nowhere,’ he said. ‘We are on a treadmill, getting more and more goods so that we are keeping up with the Joneses, but at just the same rate, the Joneses are keeping up with us!’
In the BBC Radio 4 programme The Human Zoo, to be broadcast today, the professor will demonstrate how we are hard-wired to think comparatively.