"We care more about social comparison, status and rank than about the absolute value of our bank accounts or reputations."

From the NY Times, another Human Agency post:

"Why We’re Still Happy

By SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY

Published: December 26, 2008

"THESE days, bad news about the economy is everywhere( THIS IS ONE REASON FOR THE FEAR AND AVERSION TO RISK. SATURATION ).

So why aren’t we panicking( SOME PEOPLE ARE. NAMELY, INVESTORS AND EMPLOYERS )? Why aren’t we spending our days dejected about the markets? How is it that we manage to remain mostly preoccupied with the quotidian tasks and concerns of life? Traffic, dinner, homework, deadlines, sharp words, flirtatious glances.

Because the news these days affects everyone( I WOULD ADD THAT MANY PEOPLE SEE THIS CRISIS AS CALLING FOR PRUDENCE, FOR EXAMPLE, MORE SAVING, BUT NOT PANIC. THAT'S WHY THE CONTEXT OF THE TIME MATTERS. THIS IS NOT THE 1930s ).

Research in psychology and economics suggests that when only your salary is cut, or when only you make a foolish investment, or when only you lose your job, you become considerably less satisfied with your life( I WONDER WHY ? ). But when everyone from autoworkers to Wall Street financiers becomes worse off, your life satisfaction remains pretty much( NOT COMPLETELY ) the same.

Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status( THIS IS VERY BURKEAN, AND WHY WAGE INEQUALITY AND GOVERNMENT JUSTIFICATION MATTER ). As the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000.

Similarly, Daniel Zizzo and Andrew Oswald, economists in Britain, conducted a study that showed that people would give up money if doing so would cause someone else to give up a slightly larger sum. That is, we will make ourselves poorer in order to make someone else poorer, too( THAT'S NOT GOOD. IT SOUNDS LIKE THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT ).

Findings like these reveal an all-too-human truth. We care more about social comparison, status and rank than about the absolute value of our bank accounts or reputations( I AGREE ).

For example, Andrew Clark, an economist in France, has recently shown that being laid off hurts less if you live in a community with a high unemployment rate. What’s more, if you are unemployed, you will, on average, be happier if your spouse is unemployed, too.

So in a world in which just about all of us have seen our retirement savings and home values plummet, it’s no wonder that we all feel surprisingly( NOT TOTALLY ) O.K.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of “The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.”

My only disagreement is that the context of the crisis matters to this kind of response. However, I also sense, again, that the wealthy and investor class are the people panicking in this crisis, not the rest of us. From my point of view, this is because the uncertainty of the government's response largely impacted the investor class, who, while braying endlessly about the free market, are total devotees to government intervention in their interests, which this crisis came close to wiping out.