I have known homeless artists, poets and musicians who were much happier than some very wealthy people I've met. Creative endeavors are the most common, with lots of genuine friendships being high on the list as well.

Because he takes a scientific study based on actual data, calls it "bullshit", and substitutes his own pet theory of happiness, maybe?

1. This assumes that consumptive happiness is additive and unbounded, i.e. if consuming A makes you X points happier, and consuming B makes you Y points happier, consuming A and B makes you (X + Y) happier, ad infinitum. There is no evidence of this, and this is such a strong assumption that to assume it in the absence of evidence is fallacious.

2. Their data surrounding giving does not control for interpersonal interactions, and personality characteristics. Since these two variables are both strongly confounding, their results are weak at best.

Beyond that, this is a review paper containing no new data. They are essentially taking isolated data points and playing connect the dots to generate their own pet hypothesis.

My "pet theory" of happiness is actually the distillate of the idea of happiness as established in a variety of neutral literature (from Aristotle to moderns like Layard and Lyubomirsky), informed to a degree by evolutionary biology. Do you really trust the impartiality of people publishing in journals for "Consumer Psychology"? That reminds me of health studies commissioned by cigarette companies.

Down-vote away, it only saddens me to the degree that it makes people less likely to be exposed to a dissenting but informative viewpoint. I don't care a whit for the popularity contest aspect of it.