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Spend money on other people
During a class experiment, psychologist Elizabeth Dunn asked her students their opinion on whether people would feel better from receiving a free gift of money to spend on themselves or to spend on someone else. Most students believed that people would rather spend money on themselves. After all, who doesn’t like receiving stuff?
However, when she tried it for real with random people on the street, the results were quite unexpected. Passers-by who were given $20 in cash and spend it on other people or charity felt better about themselves and happier than those who bought things for themselves.
“It seems that on average when people give to others — which can be giving to charity, it can be treating a friend to lunch, it can be buying people gifts — that those actions of giving rather than keeping seem to be associated with more happiness,” Michael Norton, an associate professor of marketing at Harvard said.
