维语创意广告（广告让我们不幸福）

在比较了27个欧洲国家90多万位市民在1980年至2011年间的生活满意度调查数据，和同一时期内这些国家的年度广告支出后，华威大学的安德鲁·奥斯瓦德（Andrew Oswald）及其团队发现两者之间存在负相关，即：国家的年度广告支出越高，其市民在一两年后的生活满意度就越低。结论：广告让我们不幸福。

奥斯瓦德: 我们的确发现了明显的负相关。如果观察每年的国民幸福度变化及该年度或数年前的广告支出变化，在GDP 和失业率等其他因素不变的条件下，会发现二者之间存在相关性。这种相关性表明：当广告商对某个国家投资时，会降低当地人民的幸福感。

Q

HBR: 什么启发你进行这方面的调查？

我和同事进行了30年的人类幸福度研究，最近将重点转向了国民幸福度。幸福国家的特点是什么？哪些变量汇聚成了一股力量？如何解释幸福度的上下起伏？我以前从来不看广告，但我遇到了一位出于其他目的而收集相关数据的研究人员，发现我们似乎应该将变量结合起来。和西方社会的许多人一样，我很难不注意到周围轰炸式的大量广告。我自然而然地联想到这种现象是否会给我们的文化带来不快：我们的所见所闻所读如何影响你我的幸福度？我认为，大量广告会让我们感到不幸福，这是相当直观的。从某种意义来说，广告天然会唤起不满情绪，从而激发人们花更多钱去购买商品和服务的欲望，以缓解这种不满。当然，我理解世界各地的广告商和营销公司并不愿意听到我说的这些。

确实，我认为他们并不同意这是广告的目标。

他们的理念是广告试图向大众介绍令人兴奋的新鲜事物以供购买，而他们的任务仅仅是提供信息，并以这种方式来提高人类幸福感。然而，托斯丹·凡勃伦（Thorstein Veblen）等人的另一种看法是，将人们置身于大量广告之中会增强其欲望，让他们感到自身的生活、成就、财产和经验不足。这项研究证实了针对广告的负面看法，而非正面看法。

Q

那么，广告是否令我们想要得到我们没有或无法获得的东西？

传统想法是这样：我必须有意识或潜意识地观察其他人怎么样，才能判断自己的幸福度。我对收入、汽车和房子的很多感受都建立在我邻居情况的基础上。这只是人性的一部分：相对比较引发担忧。但是大量研究表明，进行社会比较可能会给我们造成情感上的伤害，而广告会促使我们将自身与其他人进行比较。当我看到漂亮新车的广告，会联想到自己的普通轿车，从而产生负面情绪。当我看到这只价值一万美元的手表，再看看自己可能仅花费150 美元购买的手表，可能会想：“也许是我自己存在什么问题。”当然，国家只是个人的聚集体。在本文中，我们并非证明不满来自相对比较，但是我们怀疑这是存在的事实。

Q

你如何得知广告确实让我们感到不幸福？这是相关性还是因果关系？

首先，我们控制了很多其他对幸福度的影响因素。其次，我们观察了指定年份广告的增减，结果表明这成功预测了随后几年国民幸福度的提高或下降。第三，我们进行了大量统计检查，确定这种相关性是明显的。第四，人们有时会忘记因果关系是建立在相关性的基础上。但是作为一名研究人员，你的问题一直在我的脑海中浮现。

Q

结论是否仅适用于唯物主义者？因为很多人知道幸福无法用金钱衡量。

是的，某些人可能看到这只手表会说：“手机照样可以看时间，为什么还有人花一万美元买一只手表？”或者，某些人对汽车广告的反应是，庆幸自己没有购买油耗高、服务昂贵且污染环境的汽车。我们的研究表明，真正对人类幸福度产生巨大影响的因素有：健康状况、亲密关系、有工作、社会安全网络、没有中年危机（这对很多人来说真的是一种危机）等等。购买昂贵的手表或汽车可能会让我们感觉稍微幸福一点，但深入来看，这有一种“与邻居攀比”地位的效应。当每个人都购买同样的产品时，就不会出现这种效应。这是广告之所以会伤害群体幸福感的部分原因；除此之外，还有很多显示比较的方面。

Q

这让我想到社交媒体让我们感到难受的原因，因为我们自己会和有影响力的人进行比较。

是的。各种期刊中大量涌现有关此话题的研究。例如，2017 年的一项纵向研究发现，使用 Facebook 与幸福感降低有关。直觉告诉我，未来几十年中，这将成为一个非常严肃的政策性问题。

Q

是否有其他研究将广告与幸福感降低联系在一起？

没有。尽管有一些有趣的文献是关于儿童如何在饮食和健康方面受到广告影响，但关于此话题的内容却少之又少。我们没有发现与我们类似的文章。也许存在这样的文章，但没人告诉我们。

Q

你如何衡量全国性广告与国民幸福度？

广告指标即可直接衡量。我们拥有不同国家在不同形式的广告上所花费的费用数据：报纸、广播、电视等。衡量幸福度或生活满意度则更为复杂，但我们现在知道如何以可靠的方式进行衡量。在本研究中，我们有一个接近一百万人的大型样本，并决定选择其中一个可长期衡量人类幸福感的简单指标，即调查问题——你对自己的生活有多满意？人们回答此问题时会限定一个范围，然后我们汇总了每个国家的答案。

Q

你确定生活满意度低不是因为你刚刚提到的其他影响变量（例如年龄和婚姻状况）吗？

除了失业率和 GDP 之外，我们也控制了这些变量。我们还控制了各个国家的幸福度和广告的基本起始水平，因为我们想要用相同的基准进行公平比较。我们逐年控制所谓的冲击，例如油价冲击等，这些冲击对整个欧洲造成了同样的后果。

Q

广告的负面影响有多大？

我们的分析表明：如果将广告支出提高一倍，会导致生活满意度降低 3%。这相当于，离婚者的生活满意度骤降一半，失业者的幸福感下降了三分之一。我们在研究人们被负面生活事件的影响程度方面具有丰富的经验。即便和这些事件相比，广告产生的后果依然很大。

Q

对此我们能做些什么？

一个值得商榷的事实是，西方社会允许大量几乎不受管制的广告存在，这是不是正确的举措。尽管广告的存在不可避免。鉴于这些影响，这是我们可能要思考的问题。但在研究中，我们不提供任何政治宣言。我们不做任何政策上的建议。

Q

如果每个人都下载网络广告拦截软件并快进电视广告会出现什么情况？会提高幸福度吗？

作为一名统计研究员，我会尽量保持公平性，但我知道你可能会这样看待我们的研究：“也许不看某些广告对我来说才是明智之举。”

英文原文

The University of Warwick’s Andrew Oswald and his team compared survey data on the life satisfaction of more than 900,000 citizens of 27 European countries from 1980 to 2011 with data on annual advertising spending in those nations over the same period. The researchers found an inverse connection between the two. The higher a country’s ad spend was in one year, the less satisfied its citizens were a year or two later. Their conclusion: Advertising makes us unhappy.

Oswald: We did find a significant negative relationship. When you look at changes in national happiness each year and changes in ad spending that year or a few years earlier—and you hold other factors like GDP and unemployment constant—there is a link. This suggests that when advertisers pour money into a country, the result is diminished well-being for the people living there.

HBR: What prompted you to investigate this?

Colleagues and I have been studying human happiness for 30 years now, and recently my focus turned to national happiness. What are the characteristics of a happy country? What are the forces that mold one? What explains the ups and downs? I’d never looked at advertising before, but I met a researcher who was collecting data on it for a different reason, and it seemed to me that we should combine forces. Like a lot of people in Western society, I can’t help noticing the increasing amount of ads we’re bombarded with.

For me, it was natural to wonder whether it might create dissatisfaction in our culture: How is your happiness and mine shaped by what we see, hear, and read? I think it’s rather intuitive that lots of ads would make us less happy. In a sense they’re trying to generate dissatisfaction—stirring up your desires so that you spend more on goods and services to ease that feeling. I appreciate, of course, that the world’s corporate advertisers and marketing firms won’t like hearing me say that.

Yeah, I don’t think they’d agree that that is the goal of advertising.

Their line is that advertising is trying to expose the public to new and exciting things to buy, and their task is to simply provide information, and in that way they raise human well-being. But the alternative argument, which goes back to Thorstein Veblen and others, is that exposing people to a lot of advertising raises their aspirations—and makes them feel that their own lives, achievements, belongings, and experiences are inadequate. This study supports the negative view, not the positive one.

So ads make us want what we don’t or can’t have?

The idea here is a very old one: Before I can decide how happy I am, I have to look over my shoulder, consciously or subconsciously, and see how other people are doing. Many of my feelings about my income, my car, and my house are molded by my next-door neighbor’s income, car, and house. That’s just part of being human: worrying about relative status.

But we know from lots of research that making social comparisons can be harmful to us emotionally, and advertising prompts us to measure ourselves against others. If I see an ad for a fancy new car, it makes me think about my ordinary one, which might make me feel bad. If I see this $10,000 watch and then look at my watch, which I probably paid about $150 for, I might think, “Maybe there’s something wrong with me.” And of course nations are just agglomerations of individuals. Now, in this paper we don’t prove that the dissatisfaction is coming from relative comparisons, but we suspect that’s what happening.

How do you know advertising is actually causing us to be unhappy? That this isn’t correlational?

First, we controlled for lots of other influences on happiness. Second, we looked at increases or drops in advertising in a given year and showed that they successfully predicted a rise or fall in national happiness in ensuing years. Third, we did lots of statistical checks to make sure the empirical linkages were strong. Fourth, people sometimes forget that causality always requires there to be a correlation somewhere. But your question is constantly in my mind as a researcher.

But doesn’t this apply just to materialistic people? A lot of people understand that you can’t buy happiness.

Yes, some might see that watch ad and say, “Why are men buying $10,000 watches when they carry a mobile phone with the time on it?” Or respond to a car ad by congratulating themselves for not buying a gas-guzzler that’s expensive to service and destroys the environment. Our research shows that the really big influences on human happiness are things like health, intimate relationships, being employed, social safety nets, not being in midlife (there really is a crisis for many), and so on. Buying that watch or car can help make us feel slightly happier, but deep down it has a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses status effect. And when everybody buys the same thing the effect is ified. That’s partly why advertising hurts group happiness; there’s only so much status to go around.

This reminds me of how social media makes us miserable because we compare ourselves with influencers.

Yes. There is research bubbling up through the journals about this. For example, one longitudinal study from 2017 found that using Facebook was associated with compromised well-being. My hunch is that over the next few decades this will become a really serious policy issue.

Has any other research linked advertising with reduced well-being?

The short answer is no. Although there’s some interesting literature on how children are affected by advertising in terms of their eating and health, there is surprisingly little on this topic. We don’t know of a paper close to ours. Perhaps there is one, but nobody’s written to us about it.

How did you measure national advertising and national happiness?

The advertising metric is straightforward accounting. We have data on the amount spent in different countries on different forms of ads: newspaper, radio, TV, and so on.

Measuring happiness or life satisfaction is more complicated, but we now know how to do so reliably. In this study we have a large sample, close to a million people, and we decided to choose one of the most long-standing simple measures of human well-being, which is the survey question “How satisfied are you with your life?” People used a scale to answer it, and then we aggregated those answers for each country.

And you’re sure the lower life satisfaction isn’t due to the other things that you just mentioned affect it, like age and marital status?

Those are among the things we controlled for in addition to the unemployment rate and GDP. We also controlled for the underlying starting levels of happiness and advertising in countries, because we wanted to do a fair comparison with the same baseline. And year by year we controlled for what you might call shocks—think of oil-price shocks—that have a common set of consequences across the whole of Europe.

How big is the negative effect of ads?

Our analysis shows that if you doubled advertising spending, it would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction. That’s about half the drop in life satisfaction you’d see in a person who had gotten divorced or about one-third the drop you’d see in someone who’d become unemployed. We have a lot of experience working out how people are affected by bad life events, and advertising has sizable consequences even when compared with them.

Is there anything we can do about this?

It’s worth wondering whether Western society has done the right thing by allowing large levels of advertising, almost unregulated, as though it were inevitable. Given these patterns, it seems like something we might want to think about. But we haven’t got any political punch line in this paper. We don’t recommend any policy.

What if everyone just downloaded ad blockers for the web and fast-forwarded through commercials on TV? Would that help?

I try to be an evenhanded statistical researcher, but I can see how you might look at our study and think, “Maybe it’s sensible for me to opt out of some of these ads.”

妮可·托雷斯（Nicole Torres）| 访

马冰仑 |译 刘筱薇 | 校 腾跃 | 编辑

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