Aim higher, reach further.

Happiness? When It Comes to Rewards, Don’t Count On It

Unequal treatment tends to make people unhappy. But unequal rewards make people less unhappy when those rewards can’t be counted.

In a series of nine experiments, mostly involving Chinese volunteers, a pair of researchers found that offering unequal rewards for some arbitrary task—in the form of different sized slices of cake, for example—provoked less dissatisfaction than unequal rewards consisting of money.

Moreover, people who missed out on an imaginary buy one, get one free shampoo deal were more upset than those who missed out on the same additional quantity of shampoo packaged in a single larger bottle.

Easily quantifiable rewards such as cash or frequent flyer miles enable people to focus all too easily on how much was received rather than how enjoyable the reward is apart from its quantity, the researchers suggest.

Popular on WSJ