Spending money makes you happier, but not in the way you think

People often think that we will be happy when we spend more money on ourselves. At least, that's what people often think in modern capitalist society.

When Dr. Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School asked many of their students about this issue (the common subject in social sciences), the students said. They think they will be happier when they have 20 dollars than 5 dollars and will be more happy to spend their money than spend on others. But the truth is, these students were wrong to think so

Research over the past few years has repeatedly denied that human instincts are capitalist. For example, there is only a very small correlation between income and happiness, with a stable relationship (ie having more money does not increase happiness) with surprisingly low income levels. However, people do not stop playing lottery tickets or office workers constantly participate in the stock market. Why?

Spending money on others makes you happier (Photo: wordpress.com)

Dr. Dunn and colleagues recently published an engaging paper in Science magazine (March 21, 2008), which gives us a surprising answer: we are clear. don't know what makes us happy. Researchers have conducted two surveys and one controlled experiment, with the results all giving the same conclusions: people feel a lot happier when spending money on others, no how much money they earn.

For example, one of the datasets shows the happiness of a group of people before and after they receive bonuses at work. The results clearly show that 'spending to help or for others is an important job to foretell happiness' after people receive a bonus, and how much they receive a bonus. problem.

Dr. Dunn and his colleagues believe that to understand what determines the level of human happiness, we have noticed a lot of things that people call 'living conditions,' like religion, gender. and income. But it turns out, people adapt quite easily those factors.

What makes a difference is the kind of behavior in which people actively do things like charity. In other words, it is the ability to make a difference for others even if the amount is small (giving away $ 5 can increase our daily happiness level) changing the acceptance Our consciousness of life in a positive direction.

This kind of research not only raises questions about the entire structure of a society towards personal gain and the idea of ​​(wrong experience) that a bigger car will make you happier. but also point out that people should consider what they consider to be 'obvious' about their priorities in life.

Perhaps science is telling us that we should register for a psychology class to discover who we are and what we want.