Recession Not as Depressing as it Seems
If you’re feeling down, don’t worry. You’ve got company. Economists and psychologists say that recessions tend to make nearly everyone less happy.
The good news, though, is that recent research suggests as long as you don’t lose your job, your mood probably won’t sour as much as the GDP. What’s more, you’re unlikely to stay feeling down for long, even if the recession turns out to be a particularly long and economically painful one.
“Unemployment is a psychological as well as a financial disaster and general anxiety is not wonderful,” says Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton University psychology professor, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics. “But I expect that the people who are not directly affected by the recession will only show small changes in their mood and satisfaction with life.”
Still, most of us will feel less happy in the next few months than we did say a year or two ago. That, though, has more to do with control and less to do with actual wealth. “The loss of wealth is upsetting, but it’s not just the losing money that gets you down,” says Dan Ariely, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT and author of Predictably Irrational. “Not being able to understand what is going on is a main driver of unhappiness as well.”
…more…