The Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Spending Are Robust and Replicable in Large Samples

The Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Spending Are Robust and Replicable in Large Samples. Lara B. Aknin et al. Current Directions in Psychological Science, November 9, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221121100

Abstract: Past studies show that spending money on other people—prosocial spending—increases a person’s happiness. However, foundational research on this topic was conducted prior to psychology’s credibility revolution (or “replication crisis”), so it is essential to ask whether the evidence supporting this claim is robust and replicable. Here, we consider all 15 published preregistered experiments on prosocial spending to evaluate whether there is causal evidence for the idea that spending money on other people promotes happiness. Although the evidence appears somewhat mixed, we argue that the emotional benefits of prosocial spending are robust and replicable in large samples. These benefits are particularly likely when people have some choice about whether or how to give and when they understand how their generosity makes a difference. This review provides renewed support for the idea that prosocial spending promotes happiness and offers a template for revisiting phenomena that were established prior to the credibility revolution.

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In 2021, during the second year of the pandemic, responses to a global survey revealed that more than one third (36.7%) of people had donated to charity in the past month, a figure nearly 6% higher than global estimates from before the pandemic (Helliwell et al., 2022). What accounts for such high levels of generosity, even during a global crisis? One possibility is that using financial resources to help other people—called prosocial spending—feels good. Indeed, in the first experiment on this topic, people randomly assigned to spend $5 or $20 on others were significantly happier than people randomly assigned to spend on themselves (Dunn et al., 2008). Since then, the emotional benefits of generosity have been observed in diverse areas of the world, from South Africa to Vanuatu (Aknin et al., 2013, 2015), as well as among toddlers (Aknin et al., 2012; see Dunn et al., 2014, for a review). These findings have been cited widely in the literature, discussed in popular culture (e.g., Grant, 2014), and used to inform government policy (e.g., the 2013 report on charitable giving by the United Kingdom Cabinet Office Behavioural Insight Team). But how robust and replicable is the evidence that spending money on other people improves happiness?

Here, we review all relevant experiments implementing the current best practice of preregistration to answer the question of whether spending money on other people causally increases well-being. We conclude that the causal impact of prosocial spending on well-being is robust and replicable in large samples (n ≥ 200 per condition). We also extract key lessons on when it appears that these emotional benefits are most likely to be detected: when paradigms involve actual behavior, when participants have a choice in deciding who or how to help, and when participants receive information on how their actions help other people. These lessons underscore the hedonic benefits of actual generous behaviors that provide a sense of choice and the feeling that one has created positive change.