Money can buy happiness- if you spend on someone else

Published in the Epoch Times- print version

Money can buy happiness but only if you spend it on someone else, US research says.

Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard business school found.

Their experiments on more than 630 people in the US showed that they were measurably happier when they spent money on others-even if they thought spending on themselves would make them happier.

"We wanted to test our theory that how people spend money is at least as important as how much money they earn" said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia.

They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income, and detail their monthly spending, including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.

"Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others, reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not" Ms Dunn said in a statement.

Ms Dunn's team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus of between $3000 and $8000.

"Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a greater predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself" they wrote in their report in the journal Science.

"Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves" they said.

They gave their volunteers $5 or $20 and half got clear instructions on how to spend it. Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it.

"These findings suggest that very minor alterations in spending allocations- as little as $5 may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day" Ms Dunn said.

This could also explain why people are no happier even though US society is richer.

"Indeed, although real incomes have surged dramatically in recent decades, happiness levels have remained flat within developed countries across time" they wrote.
Reuters

Grist for your mill
Is this Epoch Times article  just  more Tavistock propaganda to boost the economy, by ecouraging gift giving, using the usual lab coated "priest" presenters, or is it genuine, useful research that gives you pause to think?  
How do you feel about this? ( know yourself)
Where would you like to be in this study?
And where do you expect to find the most self attuned people here?

Epoch Times International

This online paper is so good some of its journalists have been jailed

All of a sudden my  lifelong personal motto is supported by science ! They are finally learning  something useful !
"Given the choice, between give and take, I'll always  take the give" ---truebluehealer- Now, what say you, Godling? Are we on the right track around here or what?

And generally, senior people will be well aware, that over the last 60 yrs or more, the preoccupation, by  our business obsessed culture, preaches that self interest is the only motivator. Try any business school text book. Yet here, the study, published in the journal Science, that pinnacle of capitalism, Harvard Business School appears to be contradicting the self interest mantra, that has done society so much harm, actually reducing average society happiness. Food for thought.