Small pleasures, big happiness?

My friend and I recently had an argument on what gives more happiness: Visiting an upscale specialty restaurant, say, six times a year or patronising your neighbourhood dining place twice every month? My friend argued that the upscale restaurant would give us more happiness. It, however, appears that frequent visit to your neighbourhood restaurant could generate more pleasure. Why? Money is generally a constraint for all of us.

Diminishing utility

We want to consume more goods and services than we actually can with the money we have! Given this constraint, frequent doses of small pleasure will serve us better than infrequent doses of larger ones. This is because our happiness is likely to be driven more by the frequency than by the intensity of our experiences!

Suppose you like ice-cream. You can have two large scoops, perhaps, even three. But you will be pushing yourself if you actually have four, as the law of diminishing marginal utility will set in. This law states that the pleasure you derive from, say, ice cream will reduce as you consume each additional scoop.

One way to “break” the diminishing marginal utility is to have number of smaller ice cream experiences instead of one large one. You could, for instance, have two scoops today and two tomorrow instead of having four in one sitting.

Breaking up experiences

The logic holds true for visiting your neighbourhood restaurant frequently than having a “feast” at a specialty restaurant occasionally. The rationale is powerful. The happiness that accompanies the first bite of food is enormous.

By breaking your “large” experience into smaller ones, you have frequent bursts of “first” pleasures! The argument is true for all experiences, including a vacation.

Of course, this does not mean that we should not take costly exotic vacations or visit upscale restaurants at all.

The above logic, perhaps, explains why economists have found weak correlation between money and happiness; for wealth enables people to enjoy “large” happiness but undermines their ability to savour small pleasures.

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