Does a pay raise bring happiness? Sometimes it will, but the level of happiness is often tied to how we compare our salaries to others.

According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, people’s happiness with their pay is strongly tied to how it compares with the pay of others around them, say researchers who study compensation. Sometimes, those comparisons rankle.

Executives are more likely to leave their companies if their pay is low compared with other top bosses, according to a 2017 study in the journal Human Resource Management. Comparisons matter closer to home, too. Living in an area where people tend to make more money than you is linked to being less happy.

A 30% raise made Ryan Powell less happy at work. Powell, a 38-year-old finance director for a manufacturer in western North Carolina, received that pay bump in 2022. He had been hoping for more based on the salary information he had heard from recruiters, peers in the industry, and his M.B.A. cohort.

The initial thrill of the raise lasted about three months, he said. “The further I got into it, the more I was realizing that I was anchored to the higher number.”