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Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology
Does Spending Money on Others Promote Happiness?: A
Registered Replication Report
Lara B. Aknin, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Jason Proulx, Iris Lok, and Michael I. Norton
Online First Publication, April 6, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000191
CITATION
Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W., Proulx, J., Lok, I., & Norton, M. I. (2020, April 6). Does Spending Money on
Others Promote Happiness?: A Registered Replication Report. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology
. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000191
Does Spending Money on Others Promote Happiness?: A Registered
Replication Report
Lara B. Aknin
Simon Fraser University
Elizabeth W. Dunn
University of British Columbia
Jason Proulx
Simon Fraser University
Iris Lok
University of British Columbia
Michael I. Norton
Harvard Business School
Research indicates that spending money on others—
prosocial spending
—leads to greater happiness than
spending money on oneself (e.g., Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008, 2014). These findings have received
widespread attention because they offer insight into why people engage in costly prosocial behavior, and
what constitutes happier spending more broadly. However, most studies on prosocial spending (like most
research on the emotional benefits of generosity) utilized small sample sizes (
n
100/cell). In light of
new, improved standards for evidentiary value, we conducted high-powered registered replications of the
central paradigms used in prosocial spending research. In Experiment 1, 712 students were randomly
assigned to make a purchase for themselves or a stranger in need and then reported their happiness. As
predicted, participants assigned to engage in prosocial (vs. personal) spending reported greater momen-
tary happiness. In Experiment 2, 1950 adults recalled a time they spent money on themselves or someone
else and then reported their current happiness; contrary to predictions, participants in the prosocial
spending condition did not report greater happiness than those in the personal spending condition.
Because low levels of task engagement may have produced these null results, we conducted a replication
with minor changes designed to increase engagement; in this Experiment 3 (
N
5,199), participants who
recalled a prosocial (vs. personal) spending memory reported greater happiness but differences were
small. Taken together, these studies support the hypothesis that spending money on others does promote
happiness, but demonstrate that the magnitude of the effect depends on several methodological features.
Keywords:
prosocial spending, generosity, happiness, well-being, replication
People face countless spending choices in everyday life. Do
some purchases offer greater happiness returns than others?
In “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness” (Dunn et
al., 2008), we presented a series of studies demonstrating that
spending money on others (i.e.,
prosocial spending
) was associ-
ated with self-reported happiness. The strongest evidence for cau-
sality came from Study 3, in which 46 undergraduate students at
the University of British Columbia were randomly assigned to
spend a small windfall of either $5 or $20 on themselves or
someone else by the end of the day. In the evening, all participants
were called on the phone and asked to report their happiness.
Participants randomly assigned to spend money on others—
whether $5 or $20—were happier.
Subsequent research has offered converging evidence for the
emotional rewards of prosocial (vs. personal) spending. Aknin and
colleagues (2013) examined the hedonic consequences of acts of
prosocial spending in rich and poor nations, assessing whether the
link between prosocial spending and happiness was limited to
relatively wealthy nations. In one study, a sample of 207 students
from Canada (
n
86) and South Africa (
n
121) earned a small
monetary sum that they could use to purchase edible treats. They
were randomly assigned either to a personal spending condition in
which they purchased the treats for themselves, or a prosocial
spending condition in which they purchased treats for a sick child
at a local children’s hospital. Afterward, all participants reported
their happiness. In both Canada and South Africa, students who
engaged in prosocial spending were happier. In another study,
people from Canada (
n
140) and Uganda (
n
680) who were
X
Lara B. Aknin, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University;
Elizabeth W. Dunn, Department of Psychology, University of British
Columbia; Jason Proulx, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser Uni-
versity; Iris Lok, Department of Psychology, University of British Colum-
bia; Michael I. Norton, Marketing Unit, Harvard Business School.
We thank Armaghan Aliabadi, Jayna Bhindi, Angie Fan, Alyssa Greco,
George Guo, Jessamyn Hung, Burdett Kwon, Sejin Lee, Connor Mac-
Millan, Cassandra Natura, John Nweke, Jason Roh, Angela Starnaman, and
Oksana Soychuke for their assistance.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lara B.
Aknin, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 Univer-
sity Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada. E-mail: lara_aknin@sfu.ca
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
Attitudes and Social Cognition
© 2020 American Psychological Association
2020, Vol. 2, No. 999, 000
ISSN: 0022-3514
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000191
1
randomly assigned to think about a time they spent $20 (or its
equivalent in Ugandan shillings) of their own money on someone
else reported greater happiness than those randomly assigned to
think about a time they spent $20 on themselves. Similar results
were observed in a separate study conducted with 101 participants
from India in which respondents recalled a time they spent money
on either themselves, spent money on others, or did not recall a
spending memory.
Research examining the well-being consequences of prosocial
spending has received a large amount of attention in the academic
literature and beyond. The two papers mentioned above have been
cited nearly 2,000 times collectively (1,475 for Dunn et al., 2008;
516 for Aknin et al., 2013 according to Google Scholar on De-
cember 11, 2019). These findings are described in widely used
introductory textbooks (e.g., Aronson, Wilson, Fehr, & Akert,
2013; Myers, 2010; Smith, Mackie, & Claypool, 2014) and have
been discussed in media outlets worldwide (e.g.,
The Guardian
,
The Wall Street Journal
, and
The New York Times
). These findings
have also been featured in popular science books (e.g., “Give and
Take,” Grant, 2014; “Drive,” Pink, 2011) and utilized in providing
behavioral insights for policymakers (e.g., the U.K. Cabinet’s
Charitable Giving Assessment
).
Given the wide dissemination of research on the happiness
benefits of prosocial spending, replicating the foundational studies
is likely to be of interest to a wide range of social scientists. In the
years since these studies were conducted, our field has undergone
substantial change, and there is a growing recognition of the
importance of using larger samples and preregistration (Button et
al., 2013; Ioannidis, 2005; Nosek, Ebersole, DeHaven, & Mellor,
2018). According to a recent meta-analysis of existing studies,
generosity (broadly defined) has a small to medium causal effect
on happiness (Curry et al., 2018) and, thus, sample sizes of at least
200 participants per condition are needed to detect a main effect of
prosocial behavior. Unfortunately, very few studies examining the
hedonic consequences of prosocial spending meet this threshold
(including our own). In fact, most experiments on this topic have
used cell sizes of 100 or less (see Table 1) and, thus, should be
interpreted with caution, given that underpowered studies carry an
increased risk of false positives (Button et al., 2013; Fraley &
Vazire, 2014).
Very recently, several relevant studies have utilized larger sam-
ple sizes, although these studies were designed primarily to test
novel hypotheses about prosocial spending rather than to replicate
earlier findings. In a preregistered study (
n
150 per condition),
O’Brien and Kassirer (2019, Study 2) examined whether the emo-
tional benefits of giving are resistant to hedonic adaptation. Am-
azon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers earned a series of five-
cent bonus payments for solving 10 puzzles, and depending on
condition, all the payments went to participants themselves or to a
charity of their choice. The pleasure of winning money declined at
a lower rate when participants got money for charity versus for
themselves; in fact, participants in the charity condition showed no
evidence of hedonic adaptation at all. Another large study (
n
210 per condition) investigated whether individual differences in
oxytocin receptor genes predict the emotional rewards derived
from prosocial spending (Whillans, Aknin, Ross, Chen, & Chen,
2019). Students were randomly assigned to purchase treats for
either themselves or a sick child at a local hospital before reporting
their happiness and providing a saliva sample to collect genetic
information. Although this research revealed no effects of oxytocin
receptor genes, individuals randomly assigned to buy treats for a
sick child reported greater happiness than those who bought for
themselves. This study was not preregistered, however, and it is
appropriate to treat this replication with caution.
Finally, Hanniball and colleagues (2019) conducted three large
experiments with cell sizes ranging from 250 to 588 among ex-
offender samples reporting elevated levels of antisocial tendencies.
Participants were asked to either recall or engage in an act of
personal or prosocial spending before reporting their momentary
well-being. In each study, participants assigned to the prosocial
spending condition reported higher levels of happiness when con-
trolling for baseline well-being, but the effect sizes were very
small (
d
s
.11 to .16). In light of these findings, a plausible
conclusion (drawn by some reviewers of that paper) would be that
the happiness benefits of prosocial spending border onto trivial,
and that past research greatly overestimated the size of this effect.
However, another plausible interpretation is that people with an-
tisocial tendencies should be least likely to exhibit the warm glow
of giving, and observing even a small effect with this special
population underscores the robustness of the hedonic benefits of
giving.
To resolve this debate and enable an accurate estimate of effect
size, we replicated the key paradigms in this research stream using
well-powered, preregistered studies with participants drawn from
the broader population. The first experiment investigated the im-
mediate emotional rewards of prosocial (vs. personal) spending by
providing participants the opportunity to spend a small monetary
windfall on edible treats for themselves or an unknown sick child
at a local children’s hospital (see Aknin et al., 2013, Study 3).
Afterward, participants reported their current well-being. The sec-
ond experiment used a recollection procedure (as in Aknin et al.,
2013, Studies 2a and b) in which participants were randomly
assigned to reflect upon a previous purchase made for themselves
or others before reporting their well-being. In both experiments,
we predicted that participants randomly assigned to engage in or to
reflect upon prosocial (vs. personal) spending would report greater
momentary happiness when controlling for baseline well-being.
Experiment 1 provided robust evidence for the immediate emo-
tional rewards of generous spending, but Experiment 2 revealed a
null result, possibly because participants did not fully engage with
the task. Therefore, in a third experiment, we conducted an addi-
tional test of the recollection paradigm in which participants were
required to provide longer spending descriptions to encourage
vivid recollections and greater engagement. Materials, data, hy-
potheses, and syntax for all studies are posted on the Open Science
Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/d6ymu/).
Experiment 1
Method
Sample.
We preregistered recruiting a maximum sample of
896 individuals across two Canadian universities in exchange for
course credit. According to G Power, this sample size allowed us
to detect an effect size of
d
.22 with 95% power using
.05,
one-tailed. The effect size estimate of
d
.22 was based on the
average effect observed in past prosocial spending studies with cell
sizes of
n
100 (
d
.22; see Table 1). However, given the
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2
AKNIN, DUNN, PROULX, LOK, AND NORTON
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Table 1
Observed Effect Sizes in Prosocial Spending Experiments and Other Prosocial Intervention Experiments on Happiness
Source
Study
Dependent
variable
Experimental (E)
Control (C)
n
E
n
C
Sample (location)
Cohen’s
d
[95% CI]
Baseline
happiness
controlled
Aknin, Barrington-Leigh, et al. (2013)
2a
b
H
Recall prosocial
spending
Recall personal
spending
410
410
Student (Canada;
Uganda)
0.20 [0.06, 0.34]
No
2b
H
Recall prosocial
spending
Recall personal
spending
22
18
Community (India)
0.55 [
0.10, 1.19]
No
3
a
PA
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
104
103
Student (Canada;
South Africa)
0.46 [0.18, 0.74]
Yes
3
a
SWLS
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
104
103
Student (Canada;
South Africa)
0.13 [
0.14, 0.40]
No
Aknin, Broesch, Hamlin, and Van de Vondervoort (2015)
1
PA
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
13
13
Community (Vanuatu)
0.87 [0.01, 1.70]
Yes
2
Smiling
Donate sweets
(own)
Donate sweets (other)
20
20
Children (Vanuatu)
0.30 [
0.33, 0.92]
No
Aknin, Dunn, et al. (2013)
WB
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
25
25
Community (Canada)
0.24 [
0.32, 0.80]
No
Aknin, Fleerackers, and Hamlin (2014)
PA
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
60
59
Student (Canada)
0.38 [0.01, 0.74]
Yes
ORH
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
60
59
Research Assistant
(Canada)
0.44 [0.07, 0.81]
Yes
Aknin, Dunn, and Norton (2012)
H
Recall prosocial
spending
Recall personal
spending
26
25
Students (Canada)
0.61 [0.03, 1.18]
No
Aknin, Hamlin, and Dunn (2012)
Smiling
Donate sweets
(own)
Donate sweets (other)
20
20
Children (Canada)
0.46 [
0.18, 1.09]
No
Alden and Trew (2013)
PA
Prosocial behavior
Safety behavior
experiment
43
40
Socially anxious
student (Canada)
0.59 [0.14, 1.04]
No
PA
Prosocial behavior
Life details tracking
43
43
Socially anxious
student (Canada)
0.54 [0.10, 0.98]
No
Anik, Aknin, Norton, Dunn, and Quoidbach (2013)
1
PA
Prosocial spending
($25)
None
41
48
Community
(Australia)
0.15 [
0.57, 0.27]
Yes
1
PA
Prosocial spending
($50)
None
41
48
Community
(Australia)
0.49 [0.06, 0.92]
No
Buchanan and Bardi (2010)
1
SWLS
Prosocial behavior
New behavior
28
28
Community (U.K.)
0.41 [
0.13, 0.94]
No
1
SWLS
Prosocial behavior
No behavior
28
28
Community (U.K.)
0.62 [0.07, 1.16]
No
Chancellor, Margolis, Jacobs Bao, and Lyubomirsky (2018)
SHS
Prosocial behavior
Prosocial receiver
16
34
Community (Spain)
c
—
SWLS
Prosocial behavior
Prosocial receiver
16
34
Community (Spain)
c
—
SHS
Prosocial behavior
None
16
33
Community (Spain)
c
—
SWLS
Prosocial behavior
None
16
33
Community (Spain)
c
—
Donnelly, Lamberton, Reczek, and Norton (2017)
1
H
Social recycling
Trash/recycling
59
56
Student (U.S.)
0.77 [0.38, 1.16]
No
1
H
Social recycling
Take item
59
59
Student (U.S.)
0.85 [0.45, 1.24]
No
2b
PA
Social recycling
Trash
107
108
Community (U.S.)
1.25 [0.93, 1.56]
No
Dunn, Aknin, and Norton (2008)
3
H
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
23
23
Student (Canada)
0.67 [0.05, 1.27]
Yes
Geenen et al. (2014)
H
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
34
34
Student (Germany)
0.70 [0.19, 1.20]
Yes
Hanniball and Aknin (2016)
PA
Prosocial behavior
Self-helping behavior
51
56
Students (Canada)
0.46 [
0.84,
0.07]
No
Hanniball, Aknin, Douglas, and Viljoen (2019)
1
b
PA
Recall prosocial
spending
Recall personal
spending
250
251
Ex-offender adults
(U.S.)
0.20 [0.02, 0.38]
Yes
2
PA
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
31
33
Delinquent youth
(Canada)
0.70 [0.17, 1.22]
Yes
3
a
PA
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
357
420
Ex-offender adults
(U.S.)
0.16 [0.02, 0.30]
Yes
4
a
PA
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
588
707
Ex-offender adults
(U.S.)
0.11 [0.00, 0.22]
Yes
Layous, Kurtz, Margolis, Chancellor, and Lyubomirsky
(2017)
1
SHS
Prosocial behavior
Track daily activity
70
69
Student (U.S.)
0.08 [
0.25, 0.41]
No
1
WB
Prosocial behavior
Track daily activity
70
69
Student (U.S.)
0.20 [
0.13, 0.53]
No
1
EWB
Prosocial behavior
Track daily activity
70
69
Student (U.S.)
0.26 [
0.08, 0.59]
No
2
SHS
Prosocial behavior
Make self happier
178
81
Student (U.S.)
0.30 [0.04, 0.56]
No
2
WB
Prosocial behavior
Make self happier
178
81
Student (U.S.)
0.12 [
0.14, 0.38]
No
(
table continues
)
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3
SPENDING MONEY ON OTHERS PROMOTES HAPPINESS
Table 1 (
continued
)
Source
Study
Dependent
variable
Experimental (E)
Control (C)
n
E
n
C
Sample (location)
Cohen’s
d
[95% CI]
Baseline
happiness
controlled
Layous, Lee, Choi, and Lyubomirsky (2013)
WB
Prosocial behavior
Track locations
213
104
Student (U.S./Korea)
0.18 [
0.06, 0.41]
No
Layous, Nelson, Oberle, Schonert-Reichl, and Lyubomirsky
(2012)
SHS
Prosocial behavior
Whereabouts
208
208
Youth (Canada)
0.05 [
0.24, 0.14]
No
PA
Prosocial behavior
Whereabouts
208
208
Youth (Canada)
0.12 [
0.31, 0.07]
No
SWLS
Prosocial behavior
Whereabouts
208
208
Youth (Canada)
0.07 [
0.12, 0.26]
No
Martela and Ryan (2016)
PA
Benevolence
Neutral activity
34
42
Students (U.S.)
0.55 [0.08, 1.02]
No
Mongrain, Chin, and Shapira (2011)
SHI
Prosocial behavior
Memory
237
237
Community (Canada)
0.01 [
0.17, 0.19]
No
Nelson et al. (2015)
SHS
Prosocial behavior
Work activity
101
117
Students (U.S.; Korea)
0.23 [
0.15, 0.61]
No
SWLS
Prosocial behavior
Work activity
101
117
Students (U.S.; Korea)
0.27 [
0.11, 0.65]
No
PE
Prosocial behavior
Work activity
101
117
Students (U.S.; Korea)
0.09 [
0.28, 0.46]
No
Nelson, Layous, Cole, and Lyubomirsky (2016)
PE
Prosocial behavior
Track activities
238
116
Community/student
(U.S.)
0.30 [0.08, 0.52]
No
PE
Prosocial behavior
Self
238
116
Community/student
(U.S.)
0.20 [
0.02, 0.42]
No
O’Brien and Kassirer (2019)
1
H
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
59
54
Student (U.S.)
0.35 [
0.03, 0.73]
No
1
H
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
59
54
Student (U.S.)
0.46 [0.08, 0.84]
No
1
H
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
59
54
Student (U.S.)
0.35 [
0.03, 0.72]
No
1
H
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
59
54
Student (U.S.)
0.09 [
0.28, 0.46]
No
2
a
H
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
249
253
Community (U.S.)
0.20 [0.02, 0.38]
No
O’Connell, O’Shea, and Gallagher (2016)
SHS
Prosocial behavior
List activities
28
12
Community (U.S.)
0.02 [
0.66, 0.70]
No
SHS
Prosocial behavior
Self
28
31
Community (U.S.)
0.12 [
0.39, 0.63]
No
Ouweneel, Le Blanc, Schaufeli, and Schaufeli (2014)
2
PE
Prosocial behavior
Neutral activity
25
24
Student (Netherlands)
0.27 [
0.30, 0.83]
No
Trew and Alden (2015)
PA
Prosocial behavior
Social exposure
38
41
Socially anxious
student (Canada)
0.05 [
0.49, 0.39]
Yes
PA
Prosocial behavior
List activities
36
41
Socially anxious
student (Canada)
0.33 [
0.78, 0.13]
Yes
Whillans, Dunn, Sandstrom, Dickerson, and Madden (2016)
WB
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
36
37
Hypertense older
adults (Canada)
0.19 [
0.27, 0.65]
No
Whillans, Aknin, Ross, Chen, and Chen (2019)
a
PA
Prosocial spending
Personal spending
218
219
Students (Canada)
0.23 [0.04, 0.42]
Yes
Average prosocial spending effect size (
n
s
100)
d
.22
Average recall prosocial spending effect size (
n
s
100)
d
.20
Note
.
EWB
Eudaimonic well-being; H
happiness; ORH
other rated happiness; PA
positive affect; PE
positive emotion; SHS
Subjective Happiness Scale; SHI
Steen Happiness
Index; SWLS
Satisfaction With Life Scale; WB
well-being.
a
Prosocial spending intervention with
n
s
100; entered in estimate of Average Prosocial Spending Effect Size (
n
s
100).
b
Recall prosocial spending intervention with
n
s
100; entered in estimate
of Average Recall Prosocial Spending Effect Size (
n
s
100).
c
Statistics needed to calculate effect size were not reported in the article, nor available from the authors.
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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
4
AKNIN, DUNN, PROULX, LOK, AND NORTON
practical limitations surrounding subject pool size, cost, and time,
we preregistered our intention to perform sequential analyses
(Lakens, 2014). This strategy allowed us to examine our primary
preregistered hypothesis using an alpha of 0.0387 after collecting
data from 694 participants. The preregistration for Experiment 1
can be found on the OSF (https://osf.io/gz7a6/).
We ended up recruiting a sample of 730 individuals (
M
age
19.91,
SD
2.71; 73.6% female, 25.6% male, 0.4% other, 0.4%
missing). This sample is slightly higher than our interim target of
694 because we replaced participants who were excluded (based
on our preregistered criteria) with random assignment. As in the
original study (Aknin et al., 2013, Study 3), participants were run
in small group sessions to facilitate timely data collection. Impor-
tantly, all responses were provided in private behind desk dividers
to minimize self-presentation concerns. This study was approved
by our institutional review boards.
Procedure.
Baseline emotion was assessed using the same
items as Study 3 in Aknin et al. (2013). Participants reported their
baseline level of happiness on a state (“Do you feel happy right
now?”; from 1
not at all
, to 5
extremely
) and trait (“In
general, I consider myself . . .”; from 1
not a very happy person
,
to 7
a very happy person
) measure (Lyubomirsky & Lepper,
1999). As expected and specified in our preregistered analysis
plan, these scores were correlated,
r
(710)
.423,
p
.001, so we
standardized and averaged them to create a baseline measure of
happiness. Baseline happiness items were presented among a few
filler questions (e.g., “How tired are you feeling right now?”) to
disguise our interest in happiness.
Goody-bag paradigm.
After completing the baseline mea-
sures, participants were provided with a questionnaire informing
them that they had earned $2.50 in addition to course credit for
their participation. Funds were presented in the form of a paper
voucher and participants were asked to sign a receipt to encourage
feelings of ownership over the funds. The questionnaire then
invited participants to use their voucher to purchase a goody-bag
filled with chocolate, juice, or both, valued at $3.00. Critically,
participants were randomly assigned to one of two spending con-
ditions. In the
personal spending
condition, participants were told
that the goody-bag they purchased was for them and available for
pickup at the conclusion of the experiment. In the
prosocial
spending
condition, participants were told that the goody-bag they
purchased would be donated to a sick child at a local children’s
hospital.
Participants made their spending choice (two chocolates, two
juice boxes, or one chocolate and one juice box) in private by
selecting their preferred option on a purchase card. Once selected,
participants took the purchase card to a research assistant in a
private room. Here, the research assistant packaged the requested
items so the participant could see their purchase was real. The
packaged goody bag containing the purchased items was then
marked with the appropriate participant number and set-aside until
the completion of the study. The research assistant then handed
each participant a preprepared thank you note reinforcing their
condition assignment. Specifically, participants in the personal
condition received a note saying, “Thanks for your purchase! Your
items will be available for pickup at the end of the study!”
Meanwhile, participants in the prosocial condition received a note
saying, “Thanks for your purchase! Your items will be donated to
a sick child at Children’s Hospital at the end of the study!”
Critically, the research assistant did not know what condition
participants had been assigned to, and hence the recipient of the
goody bag, to ensure similar interactions with all participants.
Thus, because all study materials were identical, research assis-
tants were blind to condition assignment during the experiment.
Research assistants only learned of a participant’s condition as-
signment at the end of the experimental session so that they could
return items to individuals in the personal spending condition.
Gifts purchased in the prosocial spending condition were donated
to a local charity for sick children and their families.
Opt-out.
Past research has shown that a sense of volition is
essential for experiencing the emotional rewards of prosocial be-
havior (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010). Therefore, participants in both
conditions had the opportunity to opt-out of purchasing a goody-
bag and take the cash value ($2.50) for themselves. This option
ensured that participants in the prosocial spending condition felt as
though they had chosen to give a gift. To discourage participants
from opting out, cash collections were only available on one early
morning at the end of the semester. As noted in the preregistration
and consistent with past research, participants assigned to the
prosocial spending condition who chose to opt out of making a
purchase (
n
18,
2.5% of the sample) were excluded from the
primary analysis because they did not engage in a prosocial act.
This meant our final sample, after exclusions, included 712 indi-
viduals (
M
age
19.91,
SD
2.73; 74.2% female, 25.1% male,
0.3% other, 0.4% missing). However, we also conducted addi-
tional analyses to examine the consequences of prosocial spending
among the full sample of participants, including opt-outs (see
below).
After the purchase, all participants were asked to report their
current positive affect on the Positive and Negative Affect Sched-
ule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), which included
the additional word “happy” (consistent with our more recent
work, e.g., Aknin, Dunn, Sandstrom, & Norton, 2013; Aknin,
Dunn, Whillans, Grant, & Norton, 2013; Aknin, Mayraz, & Helli-
well, 2017; Whillans et al., 2019). As noted in the preregistration,
positive affect was computed by taking the average of the 11
positive items (10 original positive affect items from the PANAS
and happy), which served as the primary dependent variable of
interest. In addition, participants were asked to report their positive
and negative emotion on the Scale of Positive and Negative
Experience (SPANE; Diener et al., 2009), which assessed both
general and specific positive and negative states. Positive emotion
on the SPANE served as a second and exploratory dependent
variable; positive emotion was computed by summing together
responses for all positive items. Finally, participants reported their
demographic information (gender, age, and household income).
Hypotheses and Preregistered Analyses
In line with past research, we predicted that participants who
purchased a goody bag for a sick child would report higher levels
of positive affect than participants who purchased a goody bag for
themselves when controlling for baseline happiness. We tested this
preregistered directional hypothesis with an analysis of covariance
(ANCOVA) in which spending condition (personal vs. prosocial
spending) was entered as the independent variable, average post-
spending positive affect was entered as the dependent variable, and
baseline happiness was entered as a covariate. As predicted, par-
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5
SPENDING MONEY ON OTHERS PROMOTES HAPPINESS
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ticipants who purchased a goody bag for a sick child reported
higher positive affect (
M
2.972,
SD
.78,
n
344) than
participants who purchased a goody bag for themselves (
M
2.732,
SD
.69,
n
359),
F
(1, 700)
22.767,
p
.001,
d
.36,
r
.18; see Table 2 for summary of all experiment results. Results
are similar when we included participants in the prosocial spend-
ing condition who opted out of purchasing a goody bag; partici-
pants in the prosocial spending condition reported higher positive
affect (
M
2.945,
SD
.79,
n
362) than participants who
purchased a goody bag for themselves (
M
2.732,
SD
.69,
n
359),
F
(1, 718)
19.627,
p
.001,
d
.33,
r
.16.
We also conducted a secondary exploratory analysis to examine
whether participants randomly assigned to purchase a goody bag
for others reported higher levels of positive emotion on the
SPANE than participants who purchase a goody bag for them-
selves when controlling for baseline happiness. We tested this
hypothesis with an ANCOVA in which spending condition (per-
sonal vs. prosocial spending) was entered as the independent
variable, average postspending positive emotion on the SPANE
was entered as the dependent variable, and baseline happiness was
entered as a covariate. Analyses revealed that participants who
purchased a goody bag for a sick child reported higher positive
emotion on the SPANE (
M
21.028,
SD
5.29,
n
341) than
participants who purchased a goody bag for themselves (
M
19.654,
SD
4.56,
n
358),
F
(1, 696)
17.822,
p
.001,
d
.32,
r
.16. Results are similar when we included participants in
the prosocial spending condition who opted out of purchasing a
goody bag; participants in the prosocial spending condition re-
ported higher positive emotion (
M
20.784,
SD
5.40,
n
359)
than participants who purchased a goody bag for themselves (
M
19.654,
SD
4.56,
n
358),
F
(1, 714)
13.430,
p
.001,
d
.27,
r
.14.
Discussion
Experiment 1 provides clear evidence that participants felt hap-
pier after purchasing a goody bag for a sick child than after
purchasing a goody bag for themselves, consistent with the hy-
pothesis that spending money on others promotes happiness. We
opted to use the goody bag paradigm from Aknin et al. (2013)
because it offers numerous methodological advances over the
original paradigm used by Dunn and colleagues (2008) in which
participants were assigned to spend $5 or $20 on themselves or
others. Specifically, the goody bag paradigm requires that all
participants purchase identical items (i.e., juice and/or treats). This
consistency
ensures
that
any
emotional
differences
observed
across conditions are not a result of purchasing differential content
(e.g., experiences vs. material goods). In addition, because partic-
ipants do no interact with the recipient of their gift and their choice
is made privately, the benefits of prosocial spending cannot easily
be explained by gratitude or praise.
Experiment 1 compared the immediate emotional consequences
of personal and prosocial spending. In Experiment 2, we investi-
gated the long-term outcomes of personal and prosocial spending
by comparing how people felt when they reflected on a previous
purchase made with their own money.
Experiment 2
Method
Sample.
We recruited a final sample of 1,950 participants
(
M
age
47.72,
SD
15.19; 68.7% female, 31.0% male, 0.3%
other, 0.1% prefer not to say) using Qualtrics’ online national
panel (see Table 3 for complete sample demographics of partici-
pants in Experiments 2 and 3). This sample size was slightly higher
than our target sample of 1,926 (calculated using G Power with
.05, one-tailed, power
.95, and an average effect size of
d
.15) because we oversampled slightly to exclude participants who
did not recall a spending experience; this exclusion criterion is
explained in our preregistration available on the OSF (https://osf
.io/x39cu/). As shown in Table 1, past research using the prosocial
spending recollection paradigm indicates an average effect size of
d
.20, which requires a sample of 1,084 with
.05, one-
tailed, and power
.95. However, given that published research
may have overestimated the true effect and the costs of online data
collection are relatively low, we were able to collect a larger
sample enabling us to capture a true effect size of
d
.15 with .95
power. This study was approved by our institutional review
boards.
Table 2
Summary of Experimental Results
Experiment
n
personal
n
prosocial
M
personal
(
SD
)
M
prosocial
(
SD
)
F
p
p
2
Cohen’s
d
r
Experiment 1 (
N
712)
Outcome
Current PANAS
359
344
2.73 (.69)
2.97 (.78)
22.77
.001
.03
.36
.18
Current SPANE
358
341
19.65 (4.56)
21.03 (5.29)
17.82
.001
.02
.32
.16
Experiment 2 (
N
1,950)
Outcome
Current PANAS
983
963
3.08 (.91)
3.10 (.90)
0.457
.499
.00
.03
.02
Current SPANE
983
964
19.99 (5.93)
19.93 (6.01)
0.118
.732
.00
.02
.01
Experiment 3 (
N
5,199)
Outcome
Current PANAS
2,610
2,584
3.01 (.91)
3.04 (.90)
5.34
.010
.00
.06
.03
Current SPANE
2,613
2,584
19.49 (6.19)
19.64 (6.20)
4.57
.016
.00
.06
.03
Retrospective SPANE
2,613
2,584
21.90 (5.85)
22.69 (5.69)
37.93
.001
.01
.17
.09
Note
.
PANAS
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988); SPANE
Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (Diener
et al., 2009).
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6
AKNIN, DUNN, PROULX, LOK, AND NORTON
Procedure.
Participants were asked to report their baseline
well-being using the same items and procedure described above.
Specifically, participants reported their current level of happiness
on a single-item (“Do you feel happy right now?”; from 1
not
at all
, to 5
extremely
) and completed a measure of trait-level
happiness (“In general, I consider myself . . . ”; from 1
not a
very happy person
, to 7
a very happy person
; Lyubomirsky &
Lepper, 1999). As expected and specified in our preregistered
analysis plan, these scores were highly correlated,
r
(1,948)
.600,
p
.001, so we standardized and averaged them to create a
baseline measure of happiness. Baseline happiness items were
presented among a few filler questions (e.g., “How tired are you
feeling right now?”) to disguise our interest in happiness.
After reporting their baseline happiness, participants were ran-
domly assigned to recall and describe a previous spending expe-
rience in which they used $20 to benefit themselves or someone
else. Specifically, participants randomly assigned to the
personal
spending condition
saw the prompt:
Please think back to and describe as vividly and in as much detail as
possible the last time you spent approximately $20 on yourself. In the
space provided below please describe this event.
Participants randomly assigned to the
prosocial spending con-
dition
saw the prompt:
Please think back to and describe as vividly and in as much detail as
possible the last time you spent approximately $20 on someone else.
In the space provided below please describe this event.
All participants then reported their current positive affect on the
PANAS (Watson et al., 1988) and the additional word happy (as in
Experiment 1). Positive affect was computed by taking the average
of the 11 positive items (10 original positive affect items from the
PANAS and happy); this served as the primary dependent variable
of interest. As in Experiment 1, participants were also asked to
report their positive and negative emotion on the SPANE (Diener
et al., 2009). Positive emotion on the SPANE served as a second
and exploratory dependent variable; positive emotion was com-
puted by summing together responses for all positive items. Fi-
nally, participants reported their demographic information (gender,
age, and household income).
Although we originally used the Subjective Happiness Scale
(Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999)—a relatively trait like measure of
happiness—our more recent work and current best practice sug-
gests that measuring state happiness is preferred. As such, we
measured current positive affect and positive emotion as our
dependent variables.
Hypotheses and Preregistered Analyses
In line with past research, we predicted that participants ran-
domly assigned to reflect upon a previous instance of prosocial
spending would report higher current levels of positive affect than
participants assigned to reflect upon a previous instance of per-
sonal spending. As outlined in our preregistered analysis plan, we
tested this directional hypothesis with an ANCOVA in which
spending condition (personal vs. prosocial spending) was entered
as the independent variable, average levels of current positive
affect reported on the PANAS were entered as the dependent
variable, and baseline happiness was entered as a covariate. Con-
Table 3
Summary of Sample Demographics (Recall Studies)
Experiment 2
(
N
1,950)
Experiment 3
(
N
5,199)
Age
Experiment 2 (
N
1,950)
Experiment 3 (
N
5,199)
Demographic factor
N
%
N
%
M
(
SD
)
Mdn
(range)
M
(
SD
)
Mdn
(range)
Race/ethnicity
First Nation/Native American
21
1.1%
34
0.7%
42.72 (15.19)
40.00 (14–90)
39.00 (11.77)
36.00 (18–90)
African American/Black
236
12.1%
443
8.5%
Annual pretax household income
N
%
N
%
Hispanic
140
7.2%
252
4.8%
Less than $10,000
124
6.4%
223
4.3%
Caucasian/White
1419
72.8%
3998
76.9%
$10,000–$19,999
167
8.6%
341
6.6%
Asian
77
3.9%
322
6.2%
$20,000–$29,999
245
12.6%
526
10.1%
Middle Eastern
6
0.3%
11
0.2%
$30,000–$39,999
222
11.4%
650
12.5%
Multi-racial
36
1.8%
103
2.0%
$40,000–$49,999
196
10.1%
529
10.2%
Other
10
0.5%
16
0.3%
$50,000–$59,999
186
9.5%
595
11.4%
Prefer not to answer
5
0.3%
18
0.3%
$60,000–$69,999
148
7.6%
443
8.5%
Missing data
0
0.0%
2
0.0%
$70,000–$79,999
128
6.6%
423
8.1%
Gender
$80,000–$89,999
82
4.2%
281
5.4%
Male
605
31.0%
2205
42.4%
$90,000–$99,999
105
5.4%
280
5.4%
Female
1339
68.7%
2962
57.0%
$100,000–$149,999
219
11.2%
589
11.3%
Other
5
0.3%
22
0.4%
More than $150,000
113
5.8%
222
4.3%
Prefer not to answer
1
0.1%
8
0.2%
Prefer not to answer
15
0.8%
95
1.8%
Missing data
0
0.0%
2
0.0%
Missing data
0
0.0%
2
0.0%
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7
SPENDING MONEY ON OTHERS PROMOTES HAPPINESS
trary to our predictions and past work, participants in the prosocial
spending condition did not report higher levels of current positive
affect (
M
3.104,
SD
.90,
n
963) than participants in the
personal spending condition (
M
3.083,
SD
.91,
n
983),
F
(1,
1943)
.457,
p
.499,
d
.03,
r
.02.
As in Experiment 1, we conducted a second exploratory analysis
to examine whether participants randomly assigned to recall
spending money on others reported higher levels of current posi-
tive emotion on the SPANE than participants assigned to recall
spending money on something for themselves. Consistent with the
preregistered analysis plan, we tested this hypothesis with an
ANCOVA in which spending recall condition (personal vs. proso-
cial spending) was entered as the independent variable, current
postrecall positive emotion on the SPANE was entered as the
dependent variable, and baseline happiness was entered as a co-
variate. Analyses revealed that participants in the prosocial spend-
ing condition did not report higher levels of positive emotion on
the SPANE (
M
19.925,
SD
6.01,
n
964) than participants
in the personal spending condition (
M
19.986,
SD
5.93,
n
983),
F
(1, 1944)
.118,
p
.732,
d
.02,
r
.01.
Discussion
Experiment 2 did not replicate the long-term emotional rewards
of prosocial (vs. personal) spending with the recollection para-
digm. Specifically, participants assigned to recall a time they spent
approximately $20 on someone else reported similar happiness
levels in the current moment to participants assigned to recall a
time they spent approximately $20 on themselves. One reason for
the null effect may be that many participants did not provide
detailed spending recollections despite the request to describe their
purchase “as vividly and in as much detail as possible.” Indeed,
participants in Experiment 2 wrote an average of 22 words in
response to the recollection prompts, which is less than half the
length of responses captured in a recent study demonstrating the
emotional benefits of prosocial spending upon reflection (an av-
erage of 45 words in Hanniball et al., 2019), signaling a possible
lack of engagement in the task. Whereas participants in our past
studies have offered vivid descriptions of their experiences, many
participants in the present study wrote just a brief phrase, such as
“as a birthday gift” (in the prosocial spending condition) or “buy
coffee” (in the personal spending condition).
In interpreting the results of Experiment 2, it is also worth
noting that we measured how participants
felt in the present
after
recalling a past spending experience. Theoretically, recalling a
positive past experience should only make people feel happy in the
present if they vividly recall it, akin to mentally reliving the
experience (Strack, Schwarz, & Gschneidinger, 1985). Indeed,
studies on buying experiences (vs. material things) typically ask
participants to recall how they felt at the time of the purchase,
rather than asking about their current feelings, which bypasses the
problem of having to get participants to vividly relive the past
event.
Therefore, in Experiment 3 we conducted an additional test of
the recollection paradigm, using the same design as Experiment 2
with three small but important methodological improvements.
First, to ensure that participants engaged with the open-ended
recollection task, we recruited only MTurk participants who had
provided high-quality responses in past studies. Second, to encour-
age participants to engage in vivid reflection on this task, we
required them to write at least 150 characters when describing their
spending experience. Finally, as well as measuring participants’
current feelings (as in Experiment 2), participants also recalled
their feelings at the time of the purchase; this measurement strat-
egy was not used in the original work and, therefore, does not
represent a replication. However, we included this measure be-
cause it allowed us to examine the emotional benefits of prosocial
spending even for participants who did not vividly relive the past
experience. To examine the potential value of these methodolog-
ical improvements, we conducted an exploratory study incorporat-
ing these changes (materials and data for this exploratory study are
available on the OSF at https://osf.io/d6ymu/). After obtaining
promising results in this exploratory study, we conducted a third
preregistered study in Experiment 3.
Experiment 3
Method
Sample.
We recruited a final sample of 5,199 participants
(
M
age
39.00,
SD
11.77; 57.0% female, 42.4% male, 0.4%
other, 0.04% prefer not to say) online using MTurk system. We
used MTurk as our recruitment platform because it gave us the
ability to reach respondents with a high-quality record (e.g., 97%
approval rating in
5,000 HITs), increasing the likelihood that
participants would engage with the detailed recollection task. Our
target sample was 5050 participants. This target was based on
G Power calculations using
.05, one-tailed, power
.80, and
an effect size of
d
.07 (as observed in the identical exploratory
study mentioned above). However, we oversampled to 5,300 par-
ticipants so we could exclude those who did not recall a spending
experience; this exclusion criterion is explained in our preregis-
tration available on the OSF at https://osf.io/y9s5f/. This study was
approved by our institutional review boards.
Procedure.
Participants reported their current happiness and
trait happiness on the same single-item scales used in Experiments
1 and 2. Consistent with our earlier studies and our preregistered
analysis plan, these scores were highly correlated,
r
(5,197)
.688,
p
.001, so we standardized and averaged them to create a
baseline measure of happiness. Happiness items were presented
among a few filler questions (e.g., “How tired are you feeling right
now?”) to disguise our interest in happiness.
Participants were randomly assigned to recall and describe a
previous spending experience in which they used $20 to benefit
themselves or someone else. Recollection prompts were identical
to those used in Experiment 2; however, participants were required
to write at least 150 characters (equivalent to approximately 25
words) when describing their spending experience to encourage
vivid recollection. Most participants wrote more than the minimum
requirement; the average spending recollection contained 60.52
words (
SD
33.23).
After describing their spending memory, all participants re-
ported their
current
well-being on the PANAS and SPANE (as
before), as well their positive emotion
at the time of purchase
using the SPANE. Consistent with the previous studies and our
preregistration, positive affect was computed by taking the average
of the 11 positive items (10 original positive affect items from the
PANAS and happy) and positive emotion on the SPANE was
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AKNIN, DUNN, PROULX, LOK, AND NORTON
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computed by summing together responses for all positive items.
Finally, participants reported their demographic information (gen-
der, age, and household income).
Hypotheses and Preregistered Analyses
We predicted that participants randomly assigned to reflect upon
a previous instance of prosocial spending would report higher
current levels of positive affect than participants assigned to reflect
upon a previous instance of personal spending. As outlined in our
preregistered analysis plan, we tested this directional hypothesis
with an ANCOVA in which spending condition (personal vs.
prosocial spending) was entered as the independent variable, av-
erage levels of current positive affect reported on the PANAS were
entered as the dependent variable, and baseline happiness was
entered as a covariate. Consistent with predictions and past work,
participants in the prosocial spending condition reported higher
levels of current positive affect (
M
3.038,
SD
.90,
n
2,584)
than participants in the personal spending condition (
M
3.006,
SD
.91,
n
2,610),
F
(1, 5191)
5.341,
p
.011,
d
.06,
r
.03.
We also examined whether participants randomly assigned to
recall spending money on others reported higher levels of current
positive emotion on the SPANE than participants assigned to recall
spending money on something for themselves. Following our
preregistered analysis plan, we tested this directional hypothesis
using an ANCOVA in which spending recall condition (personal
vs. prosocial spending) was entered as the independent variable,
current postrecall positive emotion on the SPANE was entered as
the dependent variable, and baseline happiness was entered as a
covariate. As predicted, participants in the prosocial spending
condition reported higher levels of positive emotion on the SPANE
(
M
19.638,
SD
6.20,
n
2,584) than participants in the
personal spending condition (
M
19.491,
SD
6.19,
n
2,613),
F
(1, 5194)
4.571,
p
.017,
d
.06,
r
.03.
Finally, we examined whether participants randomly assigned to
recall spending money on others remember having felt happier
after spending than participants assigned to recall spending money
on themselves. As stated in the preregistration, we tested this
directional hypothesis using an ANCOVA in which spending
recall condition (personal vs. prosocial spending) was entered as
the independent variable, ratings of positive emotion on the
SPANE at the time of purchase were entered as the dependent
variable, and baseline happiness was entered as a covariate. As
predicted, participants recalled experiencing higher levels of pos-
itive emotion (on the SPANE) after spending money on others
(
M
22.696,
SD
5.69,
n
2,584) than after spending money
on themselves (
M
21.901,
SD
5.85,
n
2,613),
F
(1, 5194)
37.926,
p
.001,
d
.17,
r
.09.
Discussion
Using a modified version of our recollection paradigm that was
designed to ensure participants exhibited at least a moderate level
of engagement with the task, we replicated the emotional rewards
of prosocial (vs. personal) spending. On both measures (the PA-
NAS and the SPANE), participants reported more positive feelings
when they reflected on a time they spent their own money on
others versus themselves. However, this effect was very small
(
d
.06). We also asked participants to recall how they had felt at
the time of their purchase, which revealed a larger positive effect
of prosocial spending (
d
.17). The greater difference between
conditions reported at the time of purchase may reflect the more
immediate outcomes of personal and prosocial spending choices,
but may also stem from recollection biases or demand character-
istics. That is, asking participants to recall their past emotions may
have led them to rely on their naïve theories of how giving
should
make them feel, or their guesses of how the experimenters ex-
pected them to feel.
General Discussion
This Registered Replication Report offers evidence that spend-
ing money on others promotes happiness. Experiment 1 showed
that university students randomly assigned to purchase treats for a
sick child reported feeling happier afterward than participants
assigned to purchase treats for themselves. In Experiment 2, how-
ever, American adults recruited through Qualtrics did not report
greater current happiness when they thought about spending their
own money on others (vs. themselves) in the past. We suspected
that these null results might have stemmed from a lack of partic-
ipant engagement and, thus, we made several modifications to
enhance engagement with the task in Experiment 3. Using this
improved recollection paradigm, we found that participants in the
prosocial (vs. personal) spending condition reported slightly higher
happiness after recalling a time they spent money on others versus
themselves. We observed a similar, but larger difference between
conditions when participants recalled their feelings immediately
after making the purchase. Given that these studies were prereg-
istered and well-powered, they provide the most conclusive evi-
dence to date for the emotional benefits of prosocial spending.
The present studies also offer the best available estimates of
effect sizes to guide future experimental research on prosocial
spending. In Experiment 1, we observed an effect size (
d
.36,
r
.18) that was similar in magnitude to other well-established
effects in social psychology—such as the foot-in-the-door effect
(average
r
.16) and the effect of self-disclosure on liking
(average
r
.16; Richard, Bond, & Stokes-Zoota, 2003)—as well
as the typical effect reported in the published social psychology
literature more broadly (
r
.21; Fraley & Marks, 2007). While we
observed null effects using a recollection paradigm in Experiment
2, the modified recollection paradigm used in Experiment 3
yielded significant, but small effects on participants’ happiness in
the moment after recalling a past spending experience (
d
.06,
r
.03), and a larger effect on participants’ recall of their happi-
ness immediately after making the purchase (
d
.17,
r
.09).
The latter effect is similar in magnitude to other well-known
effects, such as the tendency to attribute failure to external factors
(average
r
.09) and the tendency for people to be more aggres-
sive toward men than women (average
r
.06; Richard et al.,
2003).
As this discussion underscores, there is no one effect size of
prosocial spending on happiness. Instead, the magnitude of the
effect critically depends on methodological choices, including the
experimental paradigm used and the manner in which happiness is
assessed. More generally, the search for a single effect size to
capture any phenomenon is challenging for at least two reasons.
First, the simple fact that moderators increase and decrease the
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
9
SPENDING MONEY ON OTHERS PROMOTES HAPPINESS
magnitude of an effect suggests that any phenomenon is inherently
variable. In the context of prosocial spending, for example, factors
such as perceived prosocial impact, a sense of volition, and con-
nection with recipients critically influence the extent to which
spending money on others promotes happiness (Aknin et al., 2013,
2013; Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2014; Lok & Dunn, 2019; Wein-
stein & Ryan, 2010). Second, broader contextual factors are also
likely to influence the observed effect size of a psychological
phenomenon. Our correlational research using the Gallup World
Poll data provides a clear example; while the effect of prosocial
spending on life satisfaction is positive in over 88% of countries
surveyed,
the
correlation
ranges
from
1.33
(in
Montenegro)
to
.63 (in Tunisia; Aknin et al., 2013).
Perhaps most importantly, our results suggest that at least a
moderate level of participant engagement may be necessary to
detect the beneficial effects of prosocial spending. Traditionally,
psychologists from Milgram (1975) to Batson (e.g., Toi & Batson,
1982) to Latané and Darley (1968) conducted elegant, high-impact
experiments that immersed participants in the phenomenon under
study. More recently, in a well-justified effort to collect much
larger samples in less time, social psychologists have increasingly
conducted studies online. Our findings point to the conclusion that
slow, costly lab studies still have an important place in social
psychology; using a highly involved lab paradigm in Experiment
1, we were able to detect a robust effect of prosocial spending on
happiness, which required enormous samples to detect using a
more pallid online procedure. Of course, it is possible to design
highly engaging experiments that can be completed online (e.g.,
O’Brien & Kassirer, 2019, Experiment 2) and, thus, an impor-
tant—and perhaps underrecognized—challenge for psychologists
lies in importing the strengths of traditional high-impact labs
studies into modern online data collection platforms.
It is also important to consider how these effects might shift
over time. Taken together, our studies suggest that people experi-
ence a clear happiness benefit immediately after spending on
others. When people look back on a past prosocial spending
experience, they remember feeling happy—and just thinking about
this past experience produces a detectable, though very small boost
to happiness in the present.
1
Once again, it is worth noting, that
original research on prosocial spending did not ask participants to
report how they felt immediately after their purchase (we imported
this paradigm from the experiential vs. material spending litera-
ture; e.g., Carter & Gilovich, 2010), so this finding should not be
considered a direct replication of past work.
That said, while the warm glow of any one generous purchase
appears to fade over time, daily life offers numerous opportunities
to spend money on others. Funder and Ozer (2019) argue that
rather than apologizing for small effects, researchers should con-
sider how these small effects may accumulate over time. For
example, someone who spends small amounts of money helping
others each day for a week may get a small happiness boost each
time, which may compound into a larger benefit for well-being.
Although it is also possible that people may habituate to repeated
behaviors, recent research suggests that people adapt more slowly
to treating others than to treating themselves (O’Brien & Kassirer,
2019). Consistent with the notion that small boosts in happiness
from prosocial spending may aggregate into greater well-being,
recent analyses of correlational data from over a million people
around the globe show that prosocial spending—in the form of
charitable giving—is one of the top six predictors of life satisfac-
tion around the world (Helliwell, Huang, & Wang, 2019).
Finally, our hope is that this research—and our learning along
the way about the importance of key factors for consideration such
as engagement—serves as a model for other researchers interested
in examining the robustness of their previously published findings.
While daunting, we found it immensely valuable to reflect upon
our past research in selecting the paradigms we felt were most
important to replicate, while being transparent about our selection
criteria and our methodological choices. New norms of transpar-
ency and rigor are already improving psychological science; our
results suggest that revisiting old paradigms with higher research
standards are one such tool to ensure that our science rests on a
solid foundation.
1
It is worth noting that another recent experiment found that simply
recalling acts of kindness led to well-being benefits that were comparable
with the effects of actually engaging in acts of kindness (Ko, Margolis,
Revord, & Lyubomirsky, 2019). This online study was conducted with
university students, who were required to spend at least 5 min on the recall
task, further underscoring the potential importance of promoting partici-
pants’ engagement.
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Received October 31, 2018
Revision received February 14, 2020
Accepted February 18, 2020
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
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AKNIN, DUNN, PROULX, LOK, AND NORTON
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