If giving money to the Red Cross increases well-being, does taking money from the Red Cross increase ill-being? – Evidence from three experiments (original) (raw)
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Prosocial Spending and Happiness: Using Money to Benefit Others Pays Off
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2014
Although a great deal of research has shown that people with more money are somewhat happier than are people with less money, our research demonstrates that how people spend their money also matters for their happiness. In particular, both correlational and experimental studies have shown that people who spend money on others report more happiness. The benefits of such prosocial spending emerge among adults around the world, and the warm glow of giving can be detected even in toddlers. These benefits are most likely to emerge when giving satisfies one or more core human needs (relatedness, competence, and autonomy). The rewards of prosocial spending are observable in both the brain and the body and can potentially be harnessed by organizations and governments.
Does Spending Money on Others Promote Happiness?: A Registered Replication Report
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2020
Research indicates that spending money on others—prosocial spending—leads to greater happiness than spending money on oneself (e.g., Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008, 2014). These findings have received widespread attention because they offer insight into why people engage in costly prosocial behavior, and what constitutes happier spending more broadly. However, most studies on prosocial spending (like most research on the emotional benefits of generosity) utilized small sample sizes (n < 100/cell). In light of new, improved standards for evidentiary value, we conducted high-powered registered replications of the central paradigms used in prosocial spending research. In Experiment 1, 712 students were randomly assigned to make a purchase for themselves or a stranger in need and then reported their happiness. As predicted, participants assigned to engage in prosocial (vs. personal) spending reported greater momentary happiness. In Experiment 2, 1950 adults recalled a time they spent money on themselves or someone else and then reported their current happiness; contrary to predictions, participants in the prosocial spending condition did not report greater happiness than those in the personal spending condition. Because low levels of task engagement may have produced these null results, we conducted a replication with minor changes designed to increase engagement; in this Experiment 3 (N = 5,199), participants who recalled a prosocial (vs. personal) spending memory reported greater happiness but differences were small. Taken together, these studies support the hypothesis that spending money on others does promote happiness, but demonstrate that the magnitude of the effect depends on several methodological features.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2014
When people are the victims of greed or recipients of generosity, their first impulse is often to pay back that behavior in kind. What happens when people cannot reciprocate, but instead have the chance to be cruel or kind to someone entirely different-to pay it forward? In 5 experiments, participants received greedy, equal, or generous divisions of money or labor from an anonymous person and then divided additional resources with a new anonymous person. While equal treatment was paid forward in kind, greed was paid forward more than generosity. This asymmetry was driven by negative affect, such that a positive affect intervention disrupted the tendency to pay greed forward. Implications for models of generalized reciprocity are discussed.
Altruism, warm glow, and charitable giving: Three experiments
2015
One of the key questions in the science of philanthropy is to what extent donations to charity are motivated by altruism – concern for public benefits, including the well-being of recipients – and warm glow – concerns for private benefits, including emotional gratification. To disentangle altruism and warm glow as motivations for giving we propose a crowding-out field experiment in the Netherlands, for which funding from the Science of Philanthropy Initiative was granted. The field experiment also seeks to test whether empathic concern for recipients and an appeal to the moral principle of care affect the level of crowding-out. This report documents the steps taken towards the execution of the field experiment. In three pilot experiments we developed and tested materials and procedures required for a valid and reliable test. In the first experiment we tested a method commonly used in social psychology to induce empathy, finding no significant effects on a reliable measure of the tem...
PLOS ONE
Spending money on one’s self, whether to solve a problem, fulfill a need, or increase enjoyment, often heightens one’s sense of happiness. It is therefore both surprising and important that people can be even happier after spending money on someone else. We conducted a close replication of a key experiment from Dunn, Aknin, and Norton (2008) to verify and expand upon their findings. Participants were given money and randomly assigned to either spend it on themselves or on someone else. Although the original study (N = 46) found that the latter group was happier, when we used the same analysis in our replication (N = 133), we did not observe a significant difference. However, we report an additional analysis, focused on a more direct measure of happiness, that does show a significant effect in the direction of the original. Follow-up analyses shed new insights into people’s predictions about their own and others’ happiness and their actual happiness when spending money for themselves...
Fear-then-relief, legitimizing a paltry contribution, and charity
Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée/European Review of Applied Psychology, 2014
Introduction. -The compliance literature describes multiple techniques of social influence. Some of them have proven effective at inducing compliance in the charity domain. One such technique is referred to as legitimizing a paltry contribution (LPC). There are theoretical grounds on which it can be assumed that this technique will be particularly effective in conditions in which a person feels relief from fear.
Helping the needy helps the self
Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 1981
A 2 (help present vs. help absent) by 2 (high-vs. low-need potential recipient) design explored the effects of helping a high-or a low-need other on the donor's self-evaluation. The results indicated that there were more beneficial self-related consequences associated with helping highthan helping low-need others. The conceptual and applied implications of the data are discussed.
VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 2013
In this exploratory study into the relationship between participation in charitable activity and self-reported measures of personal wellness, social exchange theory was used to model factors that operationalize socioeconomic variables as costs, religious orientation and charitable orientation as rewards, and wellness as profit. Structural equation modeling was applied to data from the 2004 General Social Survey, including the Module on Altruism, to measure the effects, both direct and indirect, and infer knowledge from the results. Results suggest the indication of a relationship between charitable behavior and personal wellness is valid. Specifically, those who are more charitable and those with an enhanced religious orientation exhibit greater wellness. Results also indicate that charitable orientation acts as a mediating variable between income, education, religiosity, and wellness.