it is significantly less so once your basic needs have been met.

[ambitious-girl]

Main sentence: Since then, research on happiness has come up with some astonishing facts. If we go back to the mall, shopping can indeed be a source of happiness, but it is significantly less so once your basic needs have been met.

It -> shopping
less so -> shopping is significantly less source of happiness once your basic ...


I don't know how to substitute "less so " with a noun. We often use "less so or more so" as a substitution for adjectives.

 

[ambitious-girl]

" ------- but it is a significantly smaller fraction once your basic needs have been met."

Thanks RobertJ for your reply. However, I didn't understand what you had stated.

 

[emsr2d2]

It simply means that once you've bought your basic needs, shopping is not as much of a source of happiness as it was before you bought your basic needs. I think they're trying to get at the idea that researchers previously thought that going shopping for luxuries was as much a source of happiness as shopping for necessities but, in fact, it has now been shown that that is not the case.