A league with no top

Here's an example that may be familiar. You get a pay rise, a decent one, and for a month you're pleased. Then you learn by accident that a colleague at your level earns two thousand more. Your salary hasn't gone down by a penny, but your satisfaction with it has collapsed.

That reaction has been measured. In 2012 four economists ran an experiment at the University of California. A new website had begun listing what the university's employees were paid. The economists told a random subset of employees about it, and later surveyed all employees about their jobs. Those who found they earned less than the median for their unit and occupation reported lower satisfaction with their pay and their job, and were more likely to say they'd look for another. Those who found they earned more than the median were unaffected.

Look at the shape of that result. Finding out you're behind made people less satisfied, and finding out you're ahead did nothing for them. If that holds generally, and I suspect it does, then checking your rank costs you when you lose and pays you nothing when you win.

A study from 2010 by Christopher Boyce, Gordon Brown and Simon Moore points the same way. They tested whether life satisfaction follows how much people earn or where their income ranks within a comparison group. Rank predicted satisfaction. Absolute income did not, and neither did the group's average. They also found that people gave more weight to those above them than to those below. As the authors note, a rise then makes you happier only if it moves you up the order, and every place you gain is a place someone else loses.

People will pay a lot for rank. In a survey published in 1998, Sara Solnick and David Hemenway asked people to choose between two worlds. In one they'd earn more than those around them. In the other they'd have twice the real income while everyone else had more still. Half chose the first world, with half the income and a higher rank. Concern for position was strongest for attractiveness and for praise from a supervisor. It was weakest for holiday time.

There's a well-known study of Olympic medallists too. Victoria Medvec, Scott Madey and Thomas Gilovich analysed the reactions of athletes at the 1992 Summer Games, at the end of their events and on the podium. Bronze medallists tended to look happier than silver medallists. The authors' explanation was that the silver medallist is comparing with gold, while the bronze medallist is comparing with no medal at all. If that's right, how the athletes felt about their medals depended on which comparison each was making, more than on the finishing order.

Now think about what kind of contest rank is. It has no finish, because there's always someone above you. And the group you measure against moves as you do. Festinger argued that people compare themselves with those who are similar, and as your life changes, the people similar to you change with it. The reward for winning the league is a harder league.

I'd bet your friend with the kitchen has been to a housewarming with a bigger kitchen, and drove home quiet.

You might say you don't need to be top, only somewhere respectable. But "respectable" is set by whoever's near you, so it moves too. If you'd been shown your present life ten years ago, you'd probably have taken it gladly. You're dissatisfied with it now only because you're measuring against people you hadn't met then.

So a life measured by rank can't be satisfied, however well it goes. I don't think that's a gloomy conclusion. If the ranking could never have paid out, you lose nothing by ignoring it, and you can stop treating it as a debt you owe. What to aim at instead is the subject of chapter 12.