You can’t buy happiness. There’s a timeless wisdom in those words. It’s an expression that nearly everyone has heard, at some time, somewhere. And it’s generally considered to be true. Sure, there are things – material things – that can reduce or eliminate certain burdens that most people face. Burdens like paying the rent, or buying food to feed your family, or paying the utility bills to keep your home warm in the winter.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – most people are faced with demands that money certainly helps address.
But does money buy happiness? Not directly, and not in a deep sense. But money does help alleviate a slew of burdens that might allow one to pursue things that might lead to a sense of deep fulfilment and thus happiness.
Maybe. It’s really fuzzy, actually. What triggers feelings of happiness in one person may do nothing at all for another.
But most people would agree that they’d prefer to have money than not have money. That suggests that, in some sense, even if money doesn’t make people happy, it has the potential to help some aspect of their well-being.
That’s a long-winded way of saying that being rich is generally better than being poor.
But what about … ice cream? Can ice cream help alleviate the stresses of life? Can it offer a path to contentment?
We’re not sure. But it might. And if it doesn’t, we think we found an interesting correlation between eating ice cream and high scores on satisfaction across three key metrics (more on this later).
First, let’s look at a few topline findings.
We asked our survey respondents a simple question:
“What is your favorite ice cream flavor?”
As ice cream afficionados might already know, vanilla was the top flavor, garnering a quarter of the vote (25%).
Chocolate came in a strong second, with 21%, while strawberry rounded out the top three spots with 13% of the vote.
Pistachio came in as a distant fourth (5%), while chocolate chip cookie dough, mint chocolate chip and butter pecan each received 4%.
The chart below shows how other flavors ranked.
Note the “other” category includes honorable mentions for such venerable flavors like Blueberry Bubble Gum, Caramel, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Coffee, Peanut, Strawberry Cheesecake, Toffee and Vanilla with Reese’s Pieces.
Just for fun, let’s look at the top ice cream flavors sliced by a couple of interesting variables.
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor by Political Leanings
Liberals were a bit more likely to prefer vanilla when compared to conservatives and centrists, while chocolate was the flavor of choice among conservatives.
Liberals were also more likely than either conservatives or middle-of-the-road types to say their favorite flavor was strawberry, and they also showed a much higher preference for pistachio than people falling into the other two political categories.
Conservatives were twice as likely to vote for butter pecan vs. either liberals or middle-of-the-roaders, while twice as many liberals as compared to conservatives selected chocolate chip as their favorite.
| Political Identification | Vanilla | Chocolate | Strawberry | Pistachio | Butter Pecan | Mint Chocolate Chip |
| Middle of the Road | 33% | 21% | 25% | 20% | 25% | 10% |
| Conservative | 29% | 42% | 33% | 20% | 50% | 30% |
| Liberal | 38% | 37% | 42% | 60% | 25% | 60% |
Ice Cream Preferences by Personal Satisfaction Levels
As mentioned earlier in this article, there appeared to be some correlation between ice cream preferences and how people rated their personal satisfaction on three key metrics.
We’ve already seen that vanilla, chocolate and strawberry are the dominant ice cream flavors across the board.
A quick analysis looking at favorite flavors vs. personal satisfaction regarding relationships, housing and jobs easily finds that the two mainstay flavors – vanilla and chocolate – don’t correlate with very high satisfaction indices.
Rather, these two flavors appear somewhere near the overall average or below.
On the other hand, more “exotic” flavors, like mint chocolate chip, mango, butter pecan, cookies and cream, and pistachio tend to index much higher.
— Advertisement–
Further, when we look at what flavors correspond to a at least one full standard deviation above the mean, we find the following:
Satisfaction with Personal Relationships
Those who said their favorite flavors were mint chocolate chip and mango scored highest on this metric (5% and 2% higher, respectively, than a full standard deviation above the mean).
| Ice Cream Flavor | Personal Relationships | % Above 1 Standard Deviation |
| Mint Chocolate Chip | 8.8 | 5% |
| Mango | 8.5 | 2% |
| Cookies And Cream | 8.3 | |
| Pistachio | 8.0 | |
| Strawberry | 7.9 | |
| Mint | 7.7 | |
| Vanilla | 7.6 | |
| Cherry Vanilla | 7.5 | |
| Rocky Road | 7.5 | |
| Chocolate | 6.5 | |
| Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough | 6.3 | |
| Butter Pecan | 6.3 | |
| Average & Standard Deviation | 7.5 | 0.8 |
Satisfaction with Personal Housing Situation
Those who said their favorite flavors were butter pecan and cookies and cream scored highest on this metric (4% and 1% higher, respectively, than a full standard deviation above the mean).
| Ice Cream Flavor | Personal Housing Situation | % Above 1 Standard Deviation |
| Butter Pecan | 9.3 | 4% |
| Cookies And Cream | 9.0 | 1% |
| Mint | 8.7 | |
| Cherry Vanilla | 8.5 | |
| Pistachio | 8.4 | |
| Strawberry | 7.8 | |
| Rocky Road | 7.5 | |
| Vanilla | 7.0 | |
| Chocolate | 6.3 | |
| Mint Chocolate Chip | 5.3 | |
| Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough | 4.3 | |
| Mango | 3.0 | |
| Average & Standard Deviation | 6.9 | 2.0 |
Satisfaction with Personal Job Situation
Those who said their favorite flavor was pistachio scored 1% higher than one full standard deviation above the mean.
| Ice Cream Flavor | Personal Job Situation | % Above 1 Standard Deviation |
| Pistachio | 8.6 | 1% |
| Cookies And Cream | 8.3 | |
| Cherry Vanilla | 8.0 | |
| Strawberry | 7.8 | |
| Mint | 7.7 | |
| Vanilla | 7.2 | |
| Mint Chocolate Chip | 6.8 | |
| Rocky Road | 6.5 | |
| Butter Pecan | 6.0 | |
| Chocolate | 5.6 | |
| Mango | 4.5 | |
| Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough | 2.0 | |
| Average & Standard Deviation | 6.6 | 1.9 |
So, the big, interesting question here is does preference for more “exotic” ice cream flavors somehow “predict” personal satisfaction levels – at least across the three we are tracking here?
At first glance, the answer seems to be yes…or at least, possibly.
Could it be that those who earn and might thus be more personally satisfied (assuming that is a real correlation too), might be more likely to buy more exotic flavors.
But that doesn’t track all that much with reality, as ice cream prices are fairly uniform across the flavors we looked at here. What’s more, if that were the case, that would only address satisfaction with housing and a person’s job situation directly…satisfaction personal relationships are not necessarily strongly (or only) correlated to financial success.
So, what’s going on here? Are people who prefer mint chocolate chip, mango, butter pecan, pistachio and cookies and cream somehow more personally satisfied?
We’re not 100% sure – but as far as this study goes, that seems to be an interesting and plausible possibility.