Rather Give Than Get? It's So Much Better For You

Every Wednesday afternoon I drive down to my church and go upstairs to the little kids' wing -- where my kindergarten and first- and second-graders come in from school.

I say "my" because I love these kids.  I've been working with them for several years now and I've gotten to know most of them.  One little girl runs to me every week and throws her arms around me. I can't tell you how good that makes me feel.

Now here's why I'm telling you.  A new study has found that giving is better than getting.

Yes, the work is sometimes hard.  The kids don't always want to do their homework, or read, which they're supposed to do for 20 minutes a day (they love reading with me because I usually let them off early, to play).

"The happiness we feel after a particular event or activity diminishes each time we experience that event, a phenomenon known as hedonic adaptation," newswise.com reports. "But giving to others may be the exception to this rule, according to new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business."

I can certainly attest to that.

I began volunteering at an organization for kids with special needs many years ago, when I lost not one but two jobs in a row and had to come home (from Minnesota!) to live with my parents.  At first I felt a little uncomfortable -- some of the kids were very disabled and it was hard not to cry.  But over time I felt a real sense of purpose and decided that this was something I wanted to do.  (Didn't hurt that one of the volunteers' husbands was the president of a huge magazine publishing company and I went on to get my dream job at Good Housekeeping because of him).

But that was just one of the amazingly incredible things that happened when I began volunteering.  

Newswise notes that Chicago Booth Associate Professor Ed O’Brien and Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management’s PhD candidate Samantha Kassirer found that participants’ happiness did not decline, or declined much slower, if they repeatedly bestowed gifts on others versus repeatedly receiving those same gifts themselves.

“If you want to sustain happiness over time, past research tells us that we need to take a break from what we're currently consuming and experience something new. Our research reveals that the kind of thing may matter more than assumed: Repeated giving, even in identical ways to identical others, may continue to feel relatively fresh and relatively pleasurable the more that we do it,” O’Brien explains at newswise.com.

The researchers conducted two studies. In one experiment, university student participants received $5 every day for 5 days; they were required to spend the money on the exact same thing each time. The researchers randomly assigned participants to spend the money either on themselves or on someone else, such as by leaving money in a tip jar at the same café or making an online donation to the same charity every day. The participants reflected on their spending experience and overall happiness at the end of each day.

The data, from a total of 96 participants, showed a clear pattern: Participants started off with similar levels of self-reported happiness and those who spent money on themselves reported a steady decline in happiness over the 5-day period. But happiness did not seem to fade for those who gave their money to someone else. The joy from giving for the fifth time in a row was just as strong as it was at the start.

O’Brien and Kassirer then conducted a second experiment online, which allowed them to keep the tasks consistent across participants. In this experiment, 502 participants played 10 rounds of a word puzzle game. They won five cents per round, which they either kept or donated to a charity of their choice. After each round, participants disclosed the degree to which winning made them feel happy, elated, and joyful.

Again, the self-reported happiness of those who gave their winnings away declined far more slowly than did the happiness reported by those who kept their winnings.

Further analyses ruled out some potential alternative explanations, such as the possibility that participants who gave to others had to think longer and harder about what to give, which could promote higher happiness.

“We considered many such possibilities, and measured over a dozen of them,” says O’Brien. “None of them could explain our results; there were very few incidental differences between ‘get’ and ‘give’ conditions, and the key difference in happiness remained unchanged when controlling for these other variables in the analyses.”

"Adaptation to happiness-inducing experiences can be functional to the extent that it motivates us to pursue and acquire new resources. Why doesn’t this also happen with the happiness we feel when we give?" the web site asks.

The researchers note that when people focus on an outcome, such as getting paid, they can easily compare outcomes, which diminishes their sensitivity to each experience. When people focus on an action, such as donating to a charity, they may focus less on comparison and instead experience each act of giving as a unique happiness-inducing event.

We may also be slower to adapt to happiness generated by giving because giving to others helps us maintain our prosocial reputation, reinforcing our sense of social connection and belonging.

Yes, there are days when I think, I'm doing this again, why?  One kid may have a bad day at school and is resisting all tasks.  But usually when I go home, I have this feeling of joy and warmth, and yes, happiness, and I can't wait to go back next week.