It seems money does buy happiness but the catch is only if you don’t spend the money on yourself.

Elizabeth Dunn, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, led a research study that concluded people who spent money on others through charitable donations or gifts had a greater level of happiness than those who spent money solely on them.

People who are generous are more socially connected and are happier in general. This could be attributed to the greater feeling of connectedness to a larger community that accompanies altruistic behavior.

The Dunn study is yet another in an ever-growing body of research that finds that helping others is a sure-fire way to help yourself.

Ironically, “There’s so much benefit to the person who contributes to others that I often think that there is no more selfish act than a generous act,” said Tal Ben-Shahar, author of the book “Happier.”

Ben-Shahar teaches a course on happiness at Harvard which is the University’s most popular class. During the first week of class, students are tasked to do five small acts of kindness a day that range from giving change to homeless people, to being nice to waiters, to calling their grandparents. “The effect of it is quite remarkable and lasts for much longer than a day,” he said.

Studies of happiness have long found that, unless people are extremely poor, getting more money brings surprisingly slight gains in positive feelings.

Marketers are constantly bombarding us with the message that money does buy happiness in spite of the proven truth that people tend to be made happier by experiences rather than by possessions.

Again the research shows that the happiness we get from buying, say, a new car quickly diminishes and fades away as we become face the responsibilities that comes with ownership. While taking a friend out to lunch, say, is more of an experience, and more likely to produce longer-lasting good feelings.

In the later scenario, there are other mechanisms at play such as, a kind act may lead to the perception that people are grateful, and that is linked with happiness. Also, there are social consequences when people act kindly such as enhanced relationships and the tendency for people to reciprocate.

Generosity is hard-wired into our brains. Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a division of the National Institutes of Health used a technique called functional MRI which reveals the brain structures that are most active when people perform certain mental tasks.

They weren’t surprised that the brains lit up when people received money, but what they also found was donating to charities lit up the brain’s reward circuits even more than receiving cash.

With the backing of science, let’s get out there and make the world a better place for others – and ourselves.

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