Prosocial spending encourages happiness: A replication of the only experiment reported in Dunn, Aknin, and Norton (2008). 2022

Garam Kim, and Ingrid Adams, and Malik Diaw, and Mira Celly, and Leif D Nelson, and Minah H Jung
Department of Economics, New York University, New York City, New York, United States of America.

Spending money on one's self, whether to solve a problem, fulfill a need, or increase enjoyment, often heightens one's sense of happiness. It is therefore both surprising and important that people can be even happier after spending money on someone else. We conducted a close replication of a key experiment from Dunn, Aknin, and Norton (2008) to verify and expand upon their findings. Participants were given money and randomly assigned to either spend it on themselves or on someone else. Although the original study (N = 46) found that the latter group was happier, when we used the same analysis in our replication (N = 133), we did not observe a significant difference. However, we report an additional analysis, focused on a more direct measure of happiness, that does show a significant effect in the direction of the original. Follow-up analyses shed new insights into people's predictions about their own and others' happiness and their actual happiness when spending money for themselves or others.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D004644 Emotions Those affective states which can be experienced and have arousing and motivational properties. Feelings,Regret,Emotion,Feeling,Regrets
D006240 Happiness Highly pleasant emotion characterized by outward manifestations of gratification. Gladness,Joy,Happinesses
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D057181 Pleasure Sensation of enjoyment or gratification. Enjoyment,Gratification

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