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Just
as expressing gratitude confers benefits, so too does giving to others. New
research shows that people all around the world – from Canada to Uganda, from
South Africa to India – derive more happiness from spending money on others
than they do on themselves.
"For
the first time, we show that giving away money or spending it on others confers
the ironic psychological benefit of increasing the giver’s sense of wealth,”
says Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and co-author with Elizabeth
Dunn of the University of British Columbia of the upcoming book Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending.
In a suite of new, not-yet published, studies, Norton and colleagues showed
that charitable giving makes people feel wealthier.
This
research follows on other recent work published in Psychological Science by
Norton and colleagues that shows that giving time to others – from helping with
homework to shoveling a neighbors’ driveway – actually makes people feel that
they have more time. "In fact, giving time away alleviates people’s sense
of time famine even more than receiving unexpected windfalls of free time.”
That
people feel wealthier from spending money on others may explain why poor
individuals tend to give away a higher fraction of their income than members of
the middle class do. In one study, researchers reported that Americans earning
less than $20,000 a year give a higher percentage of their income to charity
than others earning up to $300,000 a year.
"Our
results suggest when the poor give money away, that very act might mitigate
their feelings of poverty,” Norton says. "More broadly than this specific
benefit, our investigation contributes to the growing body of research
documenting the benefits of prosocial behavior, which include greater happiness,
reduced mortality, and better immune function.”
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The above story is extracted from the January
19, 2013 news release by Society forPersonality and Social Psychology
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