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Happiness, 3.08 (V) Week 3 Video 7 - Evidence for the need to love and give

3.08 (V) Week 3 Video 7 - Evidence for the need to love and give

[MUSIC] Annyeong haseo, and my Korean and other friends. The last video, I had Mike Norton describe a study in which they found that students who spent money on others were happier than those who spent it on themselves. But does this study provide convincing enough evidence that being generous makes us happier? One concern with this study is that the participants may have about lied about their happiness levels. Imagine that someone gives you some money and asks you to spend it on someone else. And then, after you've spent the money on them, they ask you did that make you feel happy? Of course, you're going to say that it made you feel happy. Why? Because you don't want to appear like a jerk. I raised this concern with Mike and here's what he had to say. » It's a great question and it's a huge concern. I mean, imagine if I ask you what'd you do with your money today and you said I gave it to a person who really needed it. I gave it to a homeless person and then I said, are you happy about it? And he said I'm miserable. Obviously it sounds like you're a jerk, right? We're supposed to be happy when we're nice to other people and so we were really worried as you asked about wether people are telling us the truth about being happy or not. One of the ways we tried to get around that is we've tried to make everything completely anonymous. So imagine that I have you spend money on somebody else in a way where I can never know if you spent on somebody else and no one else can ever know if you spent on somebody else. And the person you spent on doesn't even know it was you. And I can somehow ask you later how happy do you feel. We've done that exact experiment, so you can imagine people are trying to impress me, the researcher. You can imagine they're trying to impress their friends and family about being a nice person. And you can imagine that they're trying to impress the person that they're actually spending on. What we find is that if we take all of those other reasons away, and we make it completely anonymous, people still get happier from giving to other people than spending on themselves. Which makes us feel a little bit more confident that it isn't just people lying and telling us what they think we want to hear. Although my guess is at least a little bit of it is that. But some of it seems to be that even without any of that we just feel kind of good when we're nice to other people. » So, as you just heard from Mike, even if you take all the desire to impress others, people still report feeling better when they are nicer to other people. When they spend money on others, rather than themselves. Of course, as Mike mentioned, it's difficult to completely rule out the possibility that people asked to be generous to others are lying about their happiness levels. There's always going to be some concern that even if people don't really feel happy when they're asked to be generous to others, they won't admit this freely. How can we get around this problem? One way is to see those who are routinely generous. And not just generous because some experimenters gave them some money, but those who are generous on a day-to-day basis. They donate to charity or volunteer their services for some organization. Are those people happier than those who are not routinely generous? That's what Mike and his coauthors try to do in another study. In the study, they got hold of data collected by Gallup across a 136 countries. 200,000 respondents filled out a survey in which many things were measured. One of the things that was measured was whether the respondent had donated to charity the previous month. Yes or no? The survey also measured how happy the respondent was at the time that they filled out this survey. Very little chance in the survey that people would have lied about happiness levels because there's no way, even these survey collectors weren't trying really to focus on the relationship between generosity and happiness. Mike and his co-authors took these two pieces of information and they ran a regression using these two variables. And what Mike and his co-authors found is that in 120 of the 136 countries in this survey, the relationship between these two variables was significantly positive. That is in 90% of the countries in the world, those who donated to charity the previous month reported being far happier than those who hadn't donated to charity. I don't know about you, but I find this finding to be quite astounding. Think of it. Countries differ from each other in so many ways, in terms of climate, in terms of culture, in terms of food habits, in terms of looks, and most importantly for our discussion, they differ in terms of material wealth. Canada, where the study that Mike described in the previous video was done, is one of the richest countries in the world, and so you might think people in Canada can afford to be generous since their basic needs are met. But what about a country like Uganda or Bangladesh where people are so much poorer on average. Would generosity lead to happiness even in these poorer countries where many people are struggling for basic necessities? The Gallup data tells us that the answer is yes. And here's the real kicker. The effect of charity on happiness in the Gallup data wasn't a trivial one. Donating to charity had the same effect as doubling household income. That is, let's say that you earned $50,000 a year. Donate it to charity. The Gallup data suggests that you are likely to be just as happy as someone who owns double your income, $100,000 a year and does not donate to charity. Now, the Gallup data does get it around the problem that people may be lying about their happiness levels, but it suffers from another problem. You can't tell the direction of causality from that data. That is it's not clear if people are happier because they donated to charity or that happier people tend to donate to charity. As you may recall from week one, findings show that happy people are more generous so it's possible that all the Gallup data is showing, really, is that happiness leads to generosity, and not the other way around. I raised this concern with Mike. I also asked him whether there were any studies on generosity with kids. Imagine a study in which kids are given some money and either asked to spend it on themselves, or on others. Finding that kids asked to be generous are happier than those who are not would provide really convincing evidence that generosity leads to happiness. This is because kids, unlike adults, are less likely to lie about feeling happy when they are generous. They're not as concerned about appearing like jerks. Now as it turns out, there are studies that have looked at this effect that being generous has on the happiness of toddlers, two and three year olds. Here is Mike, summarizing results from one such study. Listen. » Some of my co-authors have a paper with kids, Kylie Hamlin, Lara Acknin, and Liz Dunn, where they asked exactly the question you just asked, which is, do little kids still feel happy about giving to other people? And if you've ever interacted with little kids, you know that sometimes they don't like to share and they get very upset if you ask them to share things. But then at the same time, sometimes little kids are amazingly generous and thoughtful and come over and give you things. So they decided to do a study to look at very young kids, actually toddlers, so these are like two year old, three year old little tiny kids. And they wanted to test if giving makes them happy as opposed to spending on themselves. But they ran in to a couple of issues with little kids. So when we do studies with grownups we can just give them money and tell them to spend it. And then ask them how happy you are on a scale from one to ten. Now, if you've ever met a two year old, not only do they not know what money is, so you can't use money, but they also don't know what one to ten is, or how to do a scale. So they had to be really creative in figuring out how to test this with kids. So instead of money as the currency, they used Goldfish crackers, because for little kids, those things are amazingly good and they're easy to count. And instead of asking them, one to ten, how happy are you, they just record their faces and look for signs of happiness on their face. And then what they do is, they have these kids with Goldfish crackers and they have the kids eat one themselves. And, that's kind of like spending money on yourself. Then they have the kid meet a monkey puppet that really happens to like Goldfish crackers, and they tell the kid, will you give one of your crackers to the monkey? And, all the kids do it. And then the experimenter says, I have an extra goldfish, not one of the kids' goldfish. Will you give that to monkey? And all the kids do that too. So you've got spending on yourself, eating your own, you've got giving your own money to somebody else, and then you've got giving free money to somebody else. And they looked at the kids' faces to see how happy they were. Turns out it's pretty good to eat Goldfish yourself. It's even better to give a Goldfish that somebody else gave you, a freebie. But the thing that makes kids happiest is actually taking out of their own stash and giving it to somebody else. And, these are two year olds, as you said, they're not thinking about what are people going to think of me. It seems to be a pure thing where even very tiny kids when they give to others they feel happy. » The study that Mike just described is one of many, many studies that have looked at the effects of generosity on happiness of toddlers. The other studies also found the same effect, namely that kids as young as two years old feel happier when they have been generous. This tells us that we seem to have an innate desire to be helpful. So, overall, if we were to take a step back and look at all the studies that we have discussed, the studies with the students at UBC, the Gallup poll study across 136 countries, and the study with the toddlers that I just described. It seems quite clear that being generous does make us happy. What this suggests is that as human beings, we have a need to love and give. And what that means in turn is that if you want to lead a happy and fulfilling life, you would do well to take advantage of this source of happiness. It turns out that all kinds of generosity will make you happier. It turns out that there are certain rules for generosity and that for generosity to make you happy, you need to be smart about when, to whom, and how, and how much you're generous. I will cover this topic in some upcoming videos but first, in the very next video, I want to discuss why being generous boosts happiness levels. Although I have discussed evidence from several studies to show you that being generous makes us happier, I haven't yet told you why it makes us happy. That's the topic for which I want to turn in the next video. Annyeong and I'll see you in the next video. [MUSIC]


3.08 (V) Week 3 Video 7 - Evidence for the need to love and give

[MUSIC] Annyeong haseo, and my Korean and other friends. The last video, I had Mike Norton describe a study in which they found that students who spent money on others were happier than those who spent it on themselves. But does this study provide convincing enough evidence that being generous makes us happier? One concern with this study is that the participants may have about lied about their happiness levels. Imagine that someone gives you some money and asks you to spend it on someone else. And then, after you've spent the money on them, they ask you did that make you feel happy? Of course, you're going to say that it made you feel happy. Why? Because you don't want to appear like a jerk. I raised this concern with Mike and here's what he had to say. » It's a great question and it's a huge concern. I mean, imagine if I ask you what'd you do with your money today and you said I gave it to a person who really needed it. I gave it to a homeless person and then I said, are you happy about it? And he said I'm miserable. Obviously it sounds like you're a jerk, right? We're supposed to be happy when we're nice to other people and so we were really worried as you asked about wether people are telling us the truth about being happy or not. One of the ways we tried to get around that is we've tried to make everything completely anonymous. So imagine that I have you spend money on somebody else in a way where I can never know if you spent on somebody else and no one else can ever know if you spent on somebody else. And the person you spent on doesn't even know it was you. And I can somehow ask you later how happy do you feel. We've done that exact experiment, so you can imagine people are trying to impress me, the researcher. You can imagine they're trying to impress their friends and family about being a nice person. And you can imagine that they're trying to impress the person that they're actually spending on. What we find is that if we take all of those other reasons away, and we make it completely anonymous, people still get happier from giving to other people than spending on themselves. Which makes us feel a little bit more confident that it isn't just people lying and telling us what they think we want to hear. Although my guess is at least a little bit of it is that. But some of it seems to be that even without any of that we just feel kind of good when we're nice to other people. » So, as you just heard from Mike, even if you take all the desire to impress others, people still report feeling better when they are nicer to other people. When they spend money on others, rather than themselves. Of course, as Mike mentioned, it's difficult to completely rule out the possibility that people asked to be generous to others are lying about their happiness levels. There's always going to be some concern that even if people don't really feel happy when they're asked to be generous to others, they won't admit this freely. How can we get around this problem? One way is to see those who are routinely generous. And not just generous because some experimenters gave them some money, but those who are generous on a day-to-day basis. They donate to charity or volunteer their services for some organization. Are those people happier than those who are not routinely generous? That's what Mike and his coauthors try to do in another study. In the study, they got hold of data collected by Gallup across a 136 countries. 200,000 respondents filled out a survey in which many things were measured. One of the things that was measured was whether the respondent had donated to charity the previous month. Yes or no? The survey also measured how happy the respondent was at the time that they filled out this survey. Very little chance in the survey that people would have lied about happiness levels because there's no way, even these survey collectors weren't trying really to focus on the relationship between generosity and happiness. Mike and his co-authors took these two pieces of information and they ran a regression using these two variables. And what Mike and his co-authors found is that in 120 of the 136 countries in this survey, the relationship between these two variables was significantly positive. That is in 90% of the countries in the world, those who donated to charity the previous month reported being far happier than those who hadn't donated to charity. I don't know about you, but I find this finding to be quite astounding. Think of it. Countries differ from each other in so many ways, in terms of climate, in terms of culture, in terms of food habits, in terms of looks, and most importantly for our discussion, they differ in terms of material wealth. Canada, where the study that Mike described in the previous video was done, is one of the richest countries in the world, and so you might think people in Canada can afford to be generous since their basic needs are met. But what about a country like Uganda or Bangladesh where people are so much poorer on average. Would generosity lead to happiness even in these poorer countries where many people are struggling for basic necessities? The Gallup data tells us that the answer is yes. And here's the real kicker. The effect of charity on happiness in the Gallup data wasn't a trivial one. Donating to charity had the same effect as doubling household income. That is, let's say that you earned $50,000 a year. Donate it to charity. The Gallup data suggests that you are likely to be just as happy as someone who owns double your income, $100,000 a year and does not donate to charity. Now, the Gallup data does get it around the problem that people may be lying about their happiness levels, but it suffers from another problem. You can't tell the direction of causality from that data. That is it's not clear if people are happier because they donated to charity or that happier people tend to donate to charity. As you may recall from week one, findings show that happy people are more generous so it's possible that all the Gallup data is showing, really, is that happiness leads to generosity, and not the other way around. I raised this concern with Mike. I also asked him whether there were any studies on generosity with kids. Imagine a study in which kids are given some money and either asked to spend it on themselves, or on others. Finding that kids asked to be generous are happier than those who are not would provide really convincing evidence that generosity leads to happiness. This is because kids, unlike adults, are less likely to lie about feeling happy when they are generous. They're not as concerned about appearing like jerks. Now as it turns out, there are studies that have looked at this effect that being generous has on the happiness of toddlers, two and three year olds. Here is Mike, summarizing results from one such study. Listen. » Some of my co-authors have a paper with kids, Kylie Hamlin, Lara Acknin, and Liz Dunn, where they asked exactly the question you just asked, which is, do little kids still feel happy about giving to other people? And if you've ever interacted with little kids, you know that sometimes they don't like to share and they get very upset if you ask them to share things. But then at the same time, sometimes little kids are amazingly generous and thoughtful and come over and give you things. So they decided to do a study to look at very young kids, actually toddlers, so these are like two year old, three year old little tiny kids. And they wanted to test if giving makes them happy as opposed to spending on themselves. But they ran in to a couple of issues with little kids. So when we do studies with grownups we can just give them money and tell them to spend it. And then ask them how happy you are on a scale from one to ten. Now, if you've ever met a two year old, not only do they not know what money is, so you can't use money, but they also don't know what one to ten is, or how to do a scale. So they had to be really creative in figuring out how to test this with kids. So instead of money as the currency, they used Goldfish crackers, because for little kids, those things are amazingly good and they're easy to count. And instead of asking them, one to ten, how happy are you, they just record their faces and look for signs of happiness on their face. And then what they do is, they have these kids with Goldfish crackers and they have the kids eat one themselves. And, that's kind of like spending money on yourself. Then they have the kid meet a monkey puppet that really happens to like Goldfish crackers, and they tell the kid, will you give one of your crackers to the monkey? And, all the kids do it. And then the experimenter says, I have an extra goldfish, not one of the kids' goldfish. Will you give that to monkey? And all the kids do that too. So you've got spending on yourself, eating your own, you've got giving your own money to somebody else, and then you've got giving free money to somebody else. And they looked at the kids' faces to see how happy they were. Turns out it's pretty good to eat Goldfish yourself. It's even better to give a Goldfish that somebody else gave you, a freebie. But the thing that makes kids happiest is actually taking out of their own stash and giving it to somebody else. And, these are two year olds, as you said, they're not thinking about what are people going to think of me. It seems to be a pure thing where even very tiny kids when they give to others they feel happy. » The study that Mike just described is one of many, many studies that have looked at the effects of generosity on happiness of toddlers. The other studies also found the same effect, namely that kids as young as two years old feel happier when they have been generous. This tells us that we seem to have an innate desire to be helpful. So, overall, if we were to take a step back and look at all the studies that we have discussed, the studies with the students at UBC, the Gallup poll study across 136 countries, and the study with the toddlers that I just described. It seems quite clear that being generous does make us happy. What this suggests is that as human beings, we have a need to love and give. And what that means in turn is that if you want to lead a happy and fulfilling life, you would do well to take advantage of this source of happiness. It turns out that all kinds of generosity will make you happier. It turns out that there are certain rules for generosity and that for generosity to make you happy, you need to be smart about when, to whom, and how, and how much you're generous. I will cover this topic in some upcoming videos but first, in the very next video, I want to discuss why being generous boosts happiness levels. Although I have discussed evidence from several studies to show you that being generous makes us happier, I haven't yet told you why it makes us happy. That's the topic for which I want to turn in the next video. Annyeong and I'll see you in the next video. [MUSIC]