TruthBook Religious News Blog

Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, March 20, 2008

OTTAWA - Money can't buy happiness, say the experts. But a Canadian psychologist says spending it can make us happier - as long as we spend it on someone else, not on ourselves.

Even giving away as little as $5 gives a measurable boost to our happiness for that day, says the study by Elizabeth Dunn's team at the University of British Columbia, and a colleague at the Harvard Business School.

She and her grad student, Lara Aknin, approached a small company in the Boston area. The boss was planning to give profit-sharing bonuses to employees, but the workers didn't yet know the details.

Then each employee got a cheque for between $3,000 and $8,000 (average $5,000). The psychologists waited a while, giving them time to spend the money.

Some bought motorcycles, some spent on vacations, on gifts, even a swing set for the kids.

"People who spent more of their bonus on others - either on gifts for others or on charitable donations - reported greater happiness," she says. (This is after taking into account how content they were to begin with.)

"In other words, people reaped greater happiness from the bonus if they spent it on others. Whereas spending it on themselves didn't really lead to any benefits," no matter how much money they received.

Lab studies on student volunteers backed up the same findings. (Students given free cash from $5 to $20 were told to spend it on themselves, or on others.)

And the findings held in a random survey of 630 Americans that asked about their level of happiness, their incomes, and how much money they tend to give to charity or spend on gifts.

The study team didn't distinguish between giving to strangers (through charity) and spending on others that the workers knew, such as relatives. A happy feeling that lasts for six to eight weeks, she notes, is a major effect. And the increase in the happiness of these workers showed up as very large.

"I know that it doesn't fit what most people would expect. We actually did a separate study... and found a significant majority of people felt they would be happier spending money on themselves" rather than on others, Ms. Dunn says.

And the religious side of this? That it's better to give than to receive, for instance?

"I'm not a very religious person," she confides. "But there are certain religions that really advocate giving, and religious people do tend to be happier. So perhaps one of the benefits of religion that previous research has documented lies in the tendency to advocate charitable giving."

She's not done yet. She wants to ask "exactly what is causing this effect? Is it that people start to feel better about themselves? Is it that relationships are strengthened? Is is that people are simply spending more time with others? We're just now investigating these studies."

Labels: charity, Elizabeth Dunn, happiness, money, Tom Spears