It's better to give than receive...

There's an old adage that says that it's better to give than to receive.  I used to hear that a lot when I was growing up, particularly around Christmas time!  I actually didn't know this, but the saying comes from a Bible verse from the Acts of the Apostles.  And as it turns out, there's now scientific proof for this statement!  Ed O'Brien from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Samantha Kassirer from Northwestern University published a study in the journal Psychological Science (see "People are slow to adapt to the warm glow of giving").  They found that giving to others makes you happier in the long run and that the feeling of joy from giving lasts for a long time compared to the joy of receiving.

O'Brien and Kassirer gave college students $5 for five days in a row with the instructions that they could spend the money however they wished, though they had to spend the money the same way for all five days.  Half of the students were told to spend the money on themselves, while the other half of the students were told to spend the money on someone else.  At the end of each day, students completed a survey that assessed their level of happiness.

As shown in the graph below, the happiness level of students who spent money on themselves declined over the course of the five days, while that of the students who spent money on someone else actually stayed the same.

O'Brien and Kassirer conducted a second experiment, in which the students carried out 10 online word-search tasks, for which they were paid 5 cents.  Again, half of the group had to donate their total earnings ($0.50) to the charity of their choice, while the other half had to keep the money.  This time, the students completed the happiness assessment following each task.  Similar to the earlier results, the happiness level of the students who donated their earnings faded slightly over the course of the 10 word-search tasks, while that of the students who kept their money decreased quickly.

Admittedly, both studies were performed in the highly contrived setting of a laboratory and the study sizes were fairly small (113 students in the first experiment and 502 students in the second).  However, the size of this study was much greater than the famous study of lottery winners (which I've mentioned in the past - see "California Dreaming") that has been continually cited since the late 1970's as proof that winning the lottery doesn't make you happy (and more recent studies actually suggest otherwise).  Just as important, the staying power of the adage "It's better to give than to receive" has to count for something.  So, in my opinion, the results of the O'Brien and Kassirer study are compelling and important.  When it comes to happiness, it is far better to give than to receive...