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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 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. 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 ) 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. 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. 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. 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- 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. 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). 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. 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% 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. 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 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. 8 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). 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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 11 SPENDING MONEY ON OTHERS PROMOTES HAPPINESS
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trolled trial. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11, 149–162. http://dx .doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1037860 Ouweneel, E., Le Blanc, P. M., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2014). On being grateful and kind: Results of two randomized controlled trials on study- related emotions and academic engagement. The Journal of Psychology, 148, 37–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2012.742854 Pink, D. H. (2011). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us . New York, NY: Penguin. Richard, F. D., Bond, C. F., Jr., & Stokes-Zoota, J. J. (2003). One hundred years of social psychology quantitatively described. Review of General Psychology, 7, 331–363. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.7.4.331 Smith, E. R., Mackie, D. M., & Claypool, H. M. (2014). Social psychology . New York, NY: Pychology Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203833698 Strack, F., Schwarz, N., & Gschneidinger, E. (1985). Happiness and reminiscing: The role of time perspective, affect, and mode of thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1460–1469. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.49.6.1460 Toi, M., & Batson, C. D. (1982). More evidence that empathy is a source of altruistic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 281–292. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.43.2.281 Trew, J. L., & Alden, L. E. (2015). Kindness reduces avoidance goals in socially anxious individuals. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 892–907. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9499-5 Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and vali- dation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063 Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 222–244. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0016984 Whillans, A. V., Aknin, L. B., Ross, C. J., Chen, L., & Chen, F. S. (2019). Common variants of the oxytocin receptor gene do not predict the positive mood benefits of prosocial spending. Emotion . Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000589 Whillans, A. V., Dunn, E. W., Sandstrom, G. M., Dickerson, S. S., & Madden, K. M. (2016). Is spending money on others good for your heart? Health Psychology, 35, 574–583. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ hea0000332 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. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 12 AKNIN, DUNN, PROULX, LOK, AND NORTON

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