Giving to Others Makes People Happy - Science behind the Practice

2500 years ago, Buddha taught thousands of lessons. Many of these lessons fall under a category I call Truth. That means that we can scientifically measure the practice and its impact on your life.

About a year ago, I came across a study testing a hypothesis: Are we happier recieving things or does giving things to other people make us happier?

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15964.pdf

In this study, researchers from the University of Zurich told 50 people they would receive $100 over a few weeks, half of the people where asked to spend that money on themselves, and half were asked to spend it on someone they know.

“The researchers wanted to see whether simply pledging to being generous was enough to make people happier. So before doling out any money, they brought everyone into the lab and asked them to think about a friend they’d like to give a gift to and how much they would hypothetically spend. They then performed functional MRI scans to measure activity in three regions of the brain associated with social behavior, generosity, happiness and decision-making.

Their choices—and their brain activity—seemed to depend on how they had pledged to spend the money earlier. Those who had agreed to spend money on other people tended to make more generous decisions throughout the experiment, compared to those who had agreed to spend on themselves. They also had more interaction between the parts of the brain associated with altruism and happiness, and they reported higher levels of happiness after the experiment was over.”

This is not the only study available, a quick search online will be bring up other studies with the same results.

Often this is not the choice we will make with our time, but if your goal is to be happier, then please consider what is going on in your life and what will bring happiness to you and to others around you.

If you are a parent, you are CONSTANTLY GIVING, so take hart in your practice and be mindful of the little things you do for your kids, it will brighten your day! Even just thigh thought a few times a day, or once in the morning and once in the evening will have an impact.

https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-giving-makes-us-happy/

https://www.usu.edu/science/discovery/fall-2017-stories/does-giving-make-you-happy