ACTIONS: Finding Happiness on $5 a Day

The results of three simple studies from a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Harvard Business School may add up to a simple key to happiness.
First, the researchers asked more than 630 Americans to report their annual income, rate their general happiness, and provide a breakdown of their monthly spending (including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others, and donations to charity). As reported in ScienceDaily, UBC psychologist Elizabeth Dunn said, “Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not.”
The second study measured the happiness levels of employees at a firm in Boston before and after they received their $3,000 to $8,000 profit-sharing bonus. What affected the employees’ happiness, says Dunn, was not so much the size of the bonus but how they spent it. The employees who devoted more of their bonus to gifts for others or toward charity consistently reported greater happiness than employees who simply spent money on their own needs.
In the third experiment, participants were given $5 or $20 and told to spend the money by 5 p.m. that day. Half the participants were instructed to spend the money on themselves; the other half had to spend the money on other people. Once again, the participants who spent the money on others reported feeling happier at the end of the day than those who spent the money on themselves.
Concludes Dunn, “These findings suggest that very minor alterations in spending allocations — as little as $5 a day — may be enough to produce real gains in happiness.”

Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen