An award-winning team of journalists, designers, and videographers who tell brand stories through Fast Company’s distinctive lens. Leaders who are shaping the future of business in creative ways. New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine—even an entirely new economic. Can money buy happiness? Psychologists and behavioral economists have been pondering this question for years. Or in other words, will a trip to the theater make someone happier than buying the latest gadget or vice ;ast Research over the last decade or so has sent out a resounding message: If you want to be happier, invest in experiences rather than things. In their groundbreaking work, psychologists Majes Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich conducted a series of surveys and found that experiences made people happier than goods. Their findings were summarized in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Then inGilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, showed why. They also tend to compar...