THINKER'S ALMANAC - December 25

Subject:  Giving and Receiving - Dunn’s Study on Happiness

Event:  Christmas Day

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

On Christmas, most people contemplate the proverbial question about whether it is better to give than receive.  A study by social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn provides some clear insight on how we might resolve the question. 

With her colleagues Lara Aknin and Michael Norton, Dunn surveyed 632 Americans, asking them to identify their average monthly expenditures and to rate their level of happiness.  Based on analysis of this data, Dunn determined that people spent on average 90% of their money on monthly expenditures.  This spending, however, had no bearing on satisfaction.  What did have an impact on happiness levels, however, was whether or not people spent money on others, either for gifts or for charity. Those that spent more on gifts or charity, were happier (1).

In Charles Dickens classic story A Christmas Carol (1843), Ebbineezer Scrooge's nephew sums up the charitable, giving spirit fostered by the holidays:

 

[Christmas is] a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. (2)

 

Not until the end of the story and after he is visited by the three Christmas spirits does Scrooge understand his nephew’s point.  In the last chapter, he awakes on Christmas day and is able to experience for the first time the joy of giving rather than receiving.

 

Challenge - Stocking Stuffers:  What single concept from the Thinker’s Almanac do you think is the most worthy of presenting as a gift to someone who is not familiar with it.  Select one topic from the year, such as the spotlight effect, cognitive dissonance, groupthink, the Ulysses contract, or the marshmallow test.  Write about the concept, assuming that your reader is unfamiliar with it.  Define the term, give concrete examples of what it looks like, and provide a rationale for why it is a concept that should be in everyone’s cognitive toolkit.

Sources:

1-Dunn, Elizabeth, Lara Aknin, and Michael Norton. “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness,” www.sciencemag.org March 21, 2008.

2-Dickens, Charles.  A Christmas Carol. Project Gutenberg.