Ownership or Taking Action: Which Is More Important for Happiness?

Possession (ownership) and taking action are concepts that contrast with each other, since the former represents stasis or little movement, and the latter is dynamic and movement itself. Thus, we have arrived at a significant question, psychologically and philosophically: Which is more important to achieve happiness, ownership (possession) or taking action?

In this paper, the authors examined the happiness that people felt from possession or ownership in comparison to the happiness they achieved as a result of taking action. The purpose of this paper was to investigate Japanese people’s preference for ownership (possession) or taking action, to evaluate the correlations of this preference with gender, age, level of education, and annual income, and to discuss reasons for people’s preference.

The authors performed a nationwide Internet survey in Japan to investigate these correlations. In Study 1, they investigated the more important contributor to happiness: 1) ownership, or 2) taking action. A total of 1062 respondents participated (514 men and 548 women; average age 44.6 years, standard deviation 14.4). In Study 2, they asked participants three types of questions about their preference for ownership, or for taking action, by using questions that differed because they included, or did not include, concrete examples. In Study 2, the authors also assessed participants’ age, gender, education, and income. A total of 1110 respondents participated (559 women, 551 men; mean age 44.7 years, standard deviation 13.7).

The findings indicated that in Study 1, many more individuals preferred taking action to ownership; this preference was greater in women than in men and in older people than in younger people. Reasons for this preference were plainly ex-pressed in respondents’ free writing, and a categorical distinction between ownership and taking action was readily recognized and widely shared. Social desirability concerns probably did not play a role in responses.

In Study 2, many individuals valued action more than ownership as like as the Study 1. The preference for taking action over ownership was greater in women than in men, in older people than in younger people, and in people with higher levels of education than in people with lower levels of education. There was no relationship with annual income. The correlations with gender and level of education were similar to results of comparable studies conducted in the USA, although in the US studies, experiential purchases were evaluated, rather than taking action; however, the correlation with age was uncertain in the US studies.

In conclusion, in Japan, as in the US, more people preferred the feeling of happiness from taking action to that from ownership. While further investigation in other countries is necessary, it may be generally said that people usually become happier from taking action than from ownership.

Article by Kohji Hayase and Mitsuhiro Ura, from Japan.

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