Does spending money on others promote happiness?: A registered replication report.

Abstract

Harvard Business SchoolResearch indicates that spending money on others-prosocial spending-leads to greater happiness than spending money on oneself (e.g., Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008. 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 Ͻ 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 ϭ 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.

Loosening the GRIP (Gender Roles Inhibiting Prosociality) to Promote Gender Equality

“…People who help others are happier. Research from diverse samples and in various countries has shown both correlational and causal links between prosocial actions and subjective well-being outcomes (e.g., Aknin et al, 2013Aknin et al, , 2015Aknin et al, , 2020Borgonovi, 2008;Dunn et al, 2008;Haski-Leventhal, 2009;Lyubomirsky et al, 2005;Nelson et al, 2016). For instance, students randomly assigned to commit five kind acts in a single day each week for 6 weeks were significantly happier than a control group (Lyubomirsky et al, 2005).…”

Helping and Happiness: A Review and Guide for Public Policy

“…When participants rated their current emotion right after their purchase, participants in the prosocial spending condition (those that spent money on others) reported feeling significantly happier than those who spent money on themselves (Aknin et al., 2020; see also Whillans et al., 2019). The happiness benefits observed in this study were roughly similar to other well‐established predictors of happiness, such as marital status (Helliwell & Putnam, 2004) and income (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2013).…”

“…The happiness benefits observed in this study were roughly similar to other well‐established predictors of happiness, such as marital status (Helliwell & Putnam, 2004) and income (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2013). Yet, the strength of this effect depends on the methods used (Aknin et al., 2020). People experienced greater emotional benefits from actually participating in an act of helping in the lab as opposed to simply thinking about doing so.…”

Dispositional optimism weakly predicts upward, rather than downward, counterfactual thinking: A prospective correlational study using episodic recall

“…Proposed solutions to bridge this gap include (a) greater publication of incremental and, where appropriate, non-significant findings; (b) the use of increased power and greater sample sizes; (c) preregistration; (d) single-paper meta-analyses; (e) reporting all, rather than only significant, studies conducted; and, (f) data transparency-among many other recommendations [15][16][17][18][19][20]. Following such recommendations, studies retesting published findings and employing one or a combination of the proposed solutions are becoming commonplace [c.f., [21][22][23]. The present paper draws on such recommendations to reexamine the relation between optimism and counterfactual direction of comparison.…”