Far from Content: How the Scarcity Bias Makes Us Value What We Don’t Have

Is it possible to have enough of everything at the same time- love, money, time, health, happiness, good work? 

Can contentment be experienced only when you have enough of all the above? 

It’s funny how the way we live our lives continuously circles around finding happiness and fulfillment, and yet we seldom sit to think about what exactly is our criteria for contentment and whether it can be found at a destination or in the journey itself. When we haven’t been able to give this a lot of thought, it’s possible to fall prey to the scarcity bias.

What is the scarcity bias?

When a resource we have seems scarce, be it love, time or money; its value increases in our eyes. So does the frustration, disappointment and longing resulting from not having enough of it. Scarcity can serve as an unpleasant reminder that resources are limited and can be exhausted, bringing up feelings of insecurity. We begin to expect perfection in making ‘productive use’ of these resources- being constantly driven to multiply the inflow, and have stringent checks on the consumption. This creates a lot of rules for how we must love, or use our time and money; making us feel caged. This in turn increases our longing for abundance of these resources. 

How does this bias affect our life?

We explain away our unhappiness as being attributable to the scarcity of these resources, making us believe that true contentment and freedom lies only in the land of abundance. The dissatisfaction about what’s not enough clouds any fulfillment coming from what’s available. The scarcity bias can also fuel the tendency to compare our lives to others, because often our idea of how much of a resource is enough is based on how much of it do people generally have. Not only does this create a feeling of ‘otherness’ and give rise to envy and insecurity, but it also puts the reins of our life satisfaction into the hands of others, making our sense of meaning and purpose feel borrowed.  

When the resource starts seeming more valuable, it also starts seeming irreplaceable. Here’s where stuckness comes into the picture, because while the unmet need keeps throbbing in our consciousness, we start feeling like there’s no alternative to the resource in question if the need is to be fulfilled. This is known as the tunnelling effect, where the criteria for contentment starts becoming increasingly specific and near sighted. It creates an illusion of a very narrow formula that guarantees contentment based on how fulfillment of a ‘key’ need would only be possible when a particular resource is available in abundance. This narrative doesn’t allow us to settle and find contentment in anything that’s less than ideal, making it seem like a compromise to a better ‘could’ve-been’. The value of the need is magnified to the extent that it blocks us from considering the true value it holds in the bigger scheme of things. For instance, after a breakup, when the exclusive love, care and presence that we feel only our partner could provide suddenly becomes scarce, it starts seeming extremely indispensable to our overall contentment. Here, it’s natural that the rawness of grief that’s associated with the breakup would make the chances of finding an equally fulfilling relationship in the future seem bleak. But with time, processing this grief allows us to gently and gradually open ourselves up to putting the broken relationship in perspective from a bird’s eye view of what has felt even slightly reminiscent of the lost love- be it self-soothing love and acceptance, or support in other relationships with family or friends.

A perceived scarcity of alternatives to a certain resource can also result in over commitment to a choice, even if upholding this choice involves a lot of painful efforts and neglect of other needs. For instance, due to an apparent scarcity of jobs in the market, a person may feel compelled to continue at their present over-demanding 10-hour job to avoid the risk of having to go jobless, even if their mental health and relationships get compromised in the process of continuing with the present job. Of course, having a job provides the financial security that allows us to fulfill our personal and relational needs, but if the job doesn’t even leave us with enough emotional bandwidth to focus on these needs, the question of whether it’s serving its purpose arises. Should the alternative to this be accepting a few months of joblessness until we find another job, which may or may not be similarly demanding is not just the individual’s question but truly is a systemic economic question too. But if capitalism is perpetuated by our belief that contentment can only be found in abundance, delving deeper into how we personally define contentment and a good quality of life can help us set goals that are less generic and more in alignment with our personal values. Contentment is dependent on our circumstances, true, but it’s also influenced by the meaning we make of the circumstances in light of what we value. For instance, if we value relational security above financial security, having fulfilling relationships can compensate for not doing as well financially. 

How else can knowledge of this bias be helpful?

• Whenever an emotional or practical need arises for us and we’re struggling to fulfill it,  being aware that the bias may be driving us to over-evaluate its importance to our general sense of contentment. This can allow us to assess the value it holds in the moment versus the value it would hold in retrospect when looking at it from a future perspective as well. To avoid being sucked into the hollowness of the desire-deprivation cycle, we can take care to estimate in advance an adequate level of the resource that’s needed based on the value it holds for us. 

• It can be liberating to know that there’s no ‘right’ amount of happiness that’s defined in any rulebook. Contentment for each of us is like a unique key for the lock that captures our needs landscape- it doesn’t have to be the same in order to click.

• There’s always going to be scope to do better. Accepting this allows us to consider how it’s natural to have limited resources and something would always seem scarce if we wait to stock up the resources in abundance in order to feel content. Instead of being a destination that can be reached only after having travelled all the roads, contentment can be found in the process of travelling as long as we’re headed in the direction that holds personal value for us. If we don’t look at the lack of abundance as  a problem to be solved, it can also help with giving ourselves the permission to rest and savor what we earn, increasing our overall satisfaction with life.

References:

Cannon, C., Goldsmith, K., & Roux, C. (2019). A self‐regulatory model of resource scarcity. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29(1), 104-127.

Mittone, L., & Savadori, L. (2009). The scarcity bias. Applied Psychology, 58, 453–468. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2009.00401.x 

Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why having too little means so much. Macmillan.

Shah, A. K., Shafir, E., & Mullainathan, S. (2015). Scarcity frames value. Psychological science, 26(4), 402-412.

Shah, A. K., Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2012). Some consequences of having too little. Science, 338(6107), 682-685.

Tomm, B. M., & Zhao, J. (2016). Scarcity captures attention and induces neglect: Eyetracking and behavioral evidence. In A. Papafragou, D. Grodner, D. Mirman, & J. C. Trueswell (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1199–1204). Cognitive Science Society. https://zhaolab.psych.ubc.ca/pdfs/Tomm_Zhao_2016_CogSci.pdf 

Disclaimer: This blog post is meant for awareness/entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice, and one must refrain from self-diagnosing. It is in no way a substitute for therapy with a mental health professional, and it is not meant to be clinical. To consult with a psychotherapist on our team, you can contact us at fettle.counselling@gmail.com.