The ponds we choose and those we don't

How the social circles we belong to shape our life goals and satisfaction

In his biography of Julius Caesar, Plutarch recounts an incident where Caesar, while crossing the Alps and passing by a small village of a poor tribe, interrupted his men’s mockery of the village’s lack of grandeur with a sharp retort:

For my part, I had rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome. - Plutarch (75 AD)

Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon

Caesar’s remark hints at a profound truth about happiness: our feelings of well-being depend less on our absolute achievements than on how they compare to those of others in the social circles we belong to (Clark et al., 2008). This fact is often overlooked. In this post, I discuss how the social ponds we live in—both those we choose and those we don’t—shape our subjective well-being.

The ponds we fall into

Being born into a more or less advantaged social background clearly impacts our life prospects. Those from wealthier backgrounds enjoy advantages that foster educational and professional success.

What is less often considered is how our social background shapes our well-being through relative comparisons. The broader society within a country provides a natural benchmark for social comparisons. Advantaged social origins are typically associated with later social success, higher social status, and, consequently, higher subjective satisfaction in society. Although we tend to habituate to our circumstances, this adjustment appears to be incomplete when it comes to status differences, with higher-status individuals generally reporting greater happiness (Clark et al., 2008).

But the effect can be the opposite if people use their parents and other members of their social background as a point of comparison. In that case, paradoxically people with disadvantaged social origins might be more likely to be happy because they have a lower reference point to judge their life achievements than those from more privileged backgrounds. As a consequence, people from lower social origins are more likely to perceive a wide range of professional outcomes as successful, moving them above their initial social standing, whereas those from higher social origins might see the same outcomes as relative failures.

Social mobility plays a significant role in happiness: for a given individual income, people who experience upward social mobility report higher subjective well-being than those who experience downward mobility (Nikolaev and Burns, 2014). These patterns—and the fact that negative emotions associated with social demotion are more intense than the positive emotions linked to upward mobility—align with Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory, when our initial social background serves as a reference point.¹

Source: Nikolaev and Burns (2014)

These effects of social origins on subjective well-being have downstream effects on our social aspirations and the actions we take to fulfil them. Sociologist Raymond Boudon argued that such differences in aspirations—driven by differences in initial social positions—may contribute to the reproduction of social inequality in educational achievement :

The expected benefit from reaching an incremental level of education [...] is higher for an individual whose social position is closest to the highest levels of the social stratification system and lower for individuals whose social position is closest to the lowest levels. - Boudon (1974)

In some of my work, I have shown that this argument could explain why talented students from disadvantaged social backgrounds are less likely to aim for the most prestigious, but also riskiest, educational programmes (Page et al., 2009). These students may be more inclined to be satisfied with moderate levels of success and may not feel the need to take risks to achieve even higher levels of success.

At the other end of the social ladder, children from advantaged social backgrounds may fear failing to match their parents’ and peers’ achievements. Successful parents set a high benchmark, both for their children to aspire to and for others to compare them against.

Studies on children of affluent parents in the US have found, surprisingly, “significantly higher use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs than did their inner-city counterparts” along with a correlation between substance use and higher rates of depression and anxiety (Luthar and Latendresse, 2005). The pressure to achieve both scholastically and extra-scholastically to meet parents’ and peers’ expectations about social success has been argued to be a key driver of these behavioural patterns (Luthar and Becker, 2002).²

The high benchmark set by successful parents can motivate some children to seek different areas of achievement to escape the shadow of their parents’ accomplishments. It may also lead them to take greater risks in their career choices in hopes of achieving a significant breakthrough.

Whether we come from affluent or modest families, what we want to achieve and what we believe will make us happy are heavily influenced by the social background we grew up in. It shapes our aspirations and the reference points we use to judge our achievements as successes or failures.

The ponds we choose

Since our social ponds influence our well-being, people could choose their social circles based on how they compare within them (Frank, 1985). Some evidence points to such behaviour. For example, in a large programme for medical students seeking housing, students were—on average—willing to pay slightly higher housing costs to live in places where their relative income would be higher (Bottan and Perez-Truglia, 2022).

However, the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” suggests that we often, prefer to belong to and keep pace with a high-status group. Groucho Marx humorously captured this sentiment with his quote about disliking clubs that would accept him. We may aspire to such high social circles that those who accept us may reveal they are not as high as we hoped.

This behaviour is bound to lead to misery as joining higher social circles means facing higher benchmarks. In his recent autobiography Late Confessions (2024),

Glenn Loury

candidly discusses his experience when he was a rising star in economics. Successful in a good department at the University of Michigan, he received an offer from Harvard.

When I accepted Harvard’s offer the year before, I saw myself ascending to the pinnacle of my profession. […] My appointment carried with it a set of expectations not just about what I was to do there, but about what my presence represented. […]

But soon, the pressure of this high-achieving environment took its toll.

The pressure had been turned all the way up, and I was starting to sweat.[…] Suddenly, I found that I was at a loss for my next big idea in economic theory, the breakthrough that would prove that I deserved the enormous spotlight that had been turned on me.

He eventually confided in his colleague, game theorist Thomas Schelling, who offered an enlightening perspective on the well-being cost of competing in high social circles:

Do you think you’re the only one? This place is full of neurotics hiding behind their secretaries and their ten-foot doors, fearful […] There are no prizes big enough to quell the panic these guys feel when someone tells them, ‘Okay, I saw your paper in Econometrica three years ago, but what are you working on today?’

Given how happiness is shaped by relative comparisons, why don’t we opt for the most modest peer groups possible? Although Caesar claimed he would be content to be the first man in a small village, he chose to trigger a high-risk civil war to become the first man in Rome instead.

In a recent paper, Greg Kubitz and I suggest that our hedonic system puts us in a bind. Whenever we feel that “we could” reach a higher social circle, we feel motivated to try, even though it may lead to lower satisfaction when we end up a smaller fish in a bigger pond. This is because our hedonic system is not designed to make us happy, but to push us to achieve our highest potential.

These features of our psychology explain why people in high-achieving groups often experience two types of feelings: satisfaction from social recognition outside their group and social anxiety—often called “impostor syndrome”—within their group.

The commonly discussed “impostor syndrome” in academia

Because relative comparisons play a key role in our subjective well-being, our happiness is largely shaped by the social ponds we inhabit: those we have fallen into and those we have chosen. We inevitably compare ourselves to others in our social circles; their achievements are what we try to emulate and surpass. This is because we are driven to strive for success, and our pursuit of happiness is evolution’s way of pushing us to always aim higher. It is also why, when we choose our social circles, we can’t help but long to be in a bigger pond, even though we may end up as a smaller fish there.

This post is part of an ongoing series unpacking the underlying mechanisms driving and shaping happiness.

References

Boudon, R. (1974). Education, opportunity, and social inequality: Changing prospects in western society. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Bottan, N.L. and Perez-Truglia, R., 2022. Choosing your pond: location choices and relative income. Review of Economics and Statistics, 104(5), pp.1010-1027.

Chan, T.W., 2018. Social mobility and the well‐being of individuals. The British Journal of Sociology, 69(1), pp.183-206.

Clark, Andrew E, Paul Frijters, and Michael A Shields. 2008. “Relative income, happiness, and utility: An explanation for the Easterlin paradox and other puzzles.” Journal of Economic Literature, 46(1): 95–144.

Dhingra, P., 2020. Hyper education: Why good schools, good grades, and good behavior are not enough. In Hyper Education. New York University Press.

Frank, R.H., 1985. Choosing the right pond: Human behavior and the quest for status. Oxford University Press.

Kubitz, G. and Page, L., 2024. “If you can, you must.” Information, utility, and loss aversion.

Loury, G.C., 2024. Late Admissions. Norton agency titles.

Luthar, S.S. and Becker, B.E., 2002. Privileged but pressured? A study of affluent youth. Child development, 73(5), pp.1593-1610.

Luthar, S.S. and Latendresse, S.J., 2005. Children of the affluent: Challenges to well-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(1), pp.49-53.

Nikolaev, B. and Burns, A., 2014. Intergenerational mobility and subjective well-being—Evidence from the general social survey. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 53, pp.82-96.

Page, L., Garboua, L.L. and Montmarquette, C., 2007. Aspiration levels and educational choices: An experimental study. Economics of Education Review, 26(6), pp.747-757.

Plutarch (c. 75 AD) Parallel Lives: The Life of Caesar.

Sorokin, P.A., 1959. Social and Cultural Mobility. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

1. Sociologist Sorokin (1959) conjectured that upward social mobility would have psychological costs for people from higher social backgrounds. Successful working-class children would experience acculturation as their access to elite culture would estrange them from their lower-class background. The fact that such acculturation and its cost exist is a credible idea. However, it doesn't seem that the overall psychological experience of upward social mobility was negative. The evidence suggests, instead, that it is positive (Chan, 2018).

2. Parental expectations do not just vary by social background but also by cultural background. Children from Asian migrants in Western countries often face high parental and peer pressure to perform at school. In his book Hyper Education, Pawan Dingra describes “the stress that Asian American high-school students face due to their parents’ priorities and styles.”

Studies in the school district found that students compare themselves to other students in order to measure their worth. Even if performing well in school, students had low self-esteem because they knew others who were earning higher grades. Attempted suicide, cutting, and drinking are not uncommon among Asian Americans—girls in particular—because of stress. A youth panel of Asian American students elaborated on the pressures of high school. - Pawan Dhingra (2020)