Analysis of Michael Norton’s Work "How To Buy Happiness"
A good communicator means to be a critical thinker. As I strive to be a good communicator in the future, I will be analyzing the TED Talk “How to buy happiness” from Michael Norton in this essay. Furthermore, I will be applying the Critical Thinking Standards and Barriers, which Ms. Wood taught me in the Critical Thinking classes in Term 1 in ICM. Of course, to understand the author and his perception of the topic, I will be including a short resume of his biography and taking it into account in case it had affected his opinion on the matter. Moreover, I will also summarize the whole TED Talk and follow through it, pointing out bad, as well as good examples of critical thinking standards applied by the speaker.
The author, Michael Norton, is a Professor of Business Administration who has graduated in Psychology and English from Williams College and received a Ph. D. in Psychology from Princeton University. He has written many articles and conducted various studies regarding the psychology of the human behavior when it comes to spending money. He has also published a book, written together with Elizabeth Dunn, which further expresses his point of view that money can buy happiness if it is spent the right way. In this TED Talk from 2011 the author explains the notion that happiness depends not on money itself, but on the way people spend it. He gives various examples supporting it by mentioning studies in the internet and a few that he himself conducted, comparing different people and countries, their choices related to spending money and their answers to the question “How happy are you?” From the results Norton draws conclusions which are supportive of his opinion.
The speaker begins by mentioning the overall accepted idea that money can’t buy happiness and states that according to him “that’s wrong”. This line is the first example, that I found, which lacks one of the Critical Thinking Standards, namely Breadth. It is a statement, which the author is convinced is right, because he is facing the barrier of egocentrism and wishful thinking. He isn’t being completely impartial and he isn’t considering any point of view different from his own. Norton points out: “I'm at a business school, so that's what we do”. According to me this is an example of a sentence which lacks Fairness. This Critical Thinking Standard is not applied here because the speaker is biased and has prejudices, which becomes clear from his professional background – he is teaching at a business school, where money is important and is valued. Therefore, he is trying to convince people that money is helpful because it can actually “buy” happiness. During the TED Talk the author is arguing that money can buy happiness. However, Norton states as well: “Also, money often makes us feel very selfish and we do things only for ourselves. ” Here, I found two Critical Thinking Standards which weren’t applied by the author, namely Accuracy and Logic. Firstly, I would like to talk about the lack of Accuracy. Norton makes a statement, but he doesn’t provide the listener/reader with any proof of it. It is impossible to differentiate if it’s true or not and the listeners have to trust the author on what he says. Secondly, throughout the whole TED Talk Norton wants to convince the audience that money has a positive aspect related to happiness when used well. Nonetheless, in this sentence he claims that money is rather negative than positive and points out the drawbacks of it. He contradicts himself; hence there is a lack of Logic.
The sentence “People who spent money on others got happier”, which Norton says as a conclusion to all of his studies, lacks Precision. He doesn’t specify exactly how much happier the people got, if just a little or a lot changed for them by spending money on others instead of themselves. After that the speaker notes: The other thing we saw is the amount of money doesn't matter much. People thought 20 dollars would be way better than five. In fact, it doesn't matter how much money you spent. What really matters is that you spent it on somebody else rather than on yourself. In these four sentences the author first explains that there isn’t any difference if money is more or less, then he states that people actually thought contrariwise, which is followed by another claim supporting the first one, namely that the amount of money isn’t a major factor. Obviously, these lines lack Logic because of the fact that the author constantly contradicts himself.
Furthermore, the author gives another example including a conducted survey:We got data from the Gallup Organization, which you know from all the political polls happening lately. They asked people, "Did you donate money to charity recently?" and, "How happy are you with life in general?" We can see what the relationship is between those two things.
Here, the Critical Thinking Standards have been reasonably applied, because Norton presents a clear example, which is backed up by evidence from a worldwide-known organization which is impartial in this particular matter.
A little bit later during the TED Talk Norton mentions: I know you're looking at the red country in the middle. I would be a jerk and not tell you what it is, but it is Central African Republic. You can make up stories. Maybe it's different there for some reason. Just below that to the right is Rwanda, though, which is amazingly green. In this example there is a lack of Breadth/Fairness. The author points out a country, which isn’t contributing to his opinion, and doesn’t make any effort to question the reasons behind this situation. He easily moves on by putting emphasis on a country which strengthens his statement. He isn’t considering another point of view but his and isn’t open-minded towards the problem. Norton gives another example: “What we see is that the teams that are pro-social sell more stuff than the teams that only got money for themselves. ” However, in this case there isn’t any connection to the TED Talk, and namely if money can buy happiness or not. The fact that a team, whose members spent money on their teammates, is more successful in selling than one which spent money on themselves, doesn’t contribute in any way for clarifying the question. Therefore, this example lacks Relevance – it has no relation to the topic of the talk.
Overall, Norton suffers from various barriers to critical thinking, e. g. wishful thinking caused by his background as a teacher in a business school, which prevents him from considering other points of view besides his; hence the TED Talk as a whole lacks Breadth and Fairness.
