Thursday, March 20, 2008

Is it in giving that we receive?--the economic evidence

My shrink friend tells me that the secret of life is doing for others. Now we have some experimental evidence.

The final bit of evidence came from an experiment in which 46 students were given either $5 or $20 to spend by the end of the day. The ones who were instructed to spend the money on others — they bought toys for siblings, treated friends to meals and made donations to the homeless — were happier at the end of the day than the ones who were instructed to spend the money on themselves.

2 comments:

  1. “My shrink friend tells me that the secret of life is doing for others....”

    Well, thanks for the tip of the hat. However, this is like me writing on my blog, “My economist friend tells me that the secret of life is making money.” And, even then, it wouldn’t work since I’d need a nickname for you analogous to “shrink friend.”

    While doing for others may be an important component of a reasonably articulated “secret of life” statement things are far more complicated than that. Doing for others, for some, is burdensome and overwhelming. For others, it’s liberating. How do we account for this?

    Of course there’s no quick or easy way to talk about the secret of life and probably no single definition that works equally well for each of us.

    If the reader is curious to further explore the topic of happiness (“secret of life” type stuff) I can suggest the video log of the 2004 TED conference viewable at: http://www.ted.com/themes/view/id/33. These are short (15-25 minute) videotaped lectures.

    I especially favor the work of Matthieu Ricard and Barry Schwartz.

    Luke’s Shrink Friend

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  2. Yeah of course, it is in giving that we receive, if we learn this art then we can make it really big, but without mastering this art, we will never feel happy from inside. I trade with OctaFX broker and this is a really sensational broker with having low spread of 0.2 pips, high leverage up to 1.500 and 24/5 support service, it really makes me feel comfortable and happy trading with them especially in difficult situations in this giant market.

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