Helping others makes us happier but it matters how we do it Elizabeth Dunn
So, I have a pretty fun job,
which is to figure out
what makes people happy.
It’s so fun, it might almost seen
a little frivolous,
especially at a time where
we’re being confronted
with some pretty depressing headlines.
But it turns out that studying happiness
might provide a key
to solving some of the toughest
problems we’re facing.
It’s taken me almost a decade
to figure this out.
Pretty early on in my career,
I published a paper in “Science”
with my collaborators,
entitled, “Spending Money
on Others Promotes Happiness.”
I was very confident in this conclusion,
except for one thing:
it didn’t seem to apply to me.
(Laughter)
I hardly ever gave money to charity,
and when I did,
I didn’t feel that warm glow
I was expecting.
So I started to wonder if maybe
there was something wrong with my research
or something wrong with me.
My own lackluster emotional response
to giving was especially puzzling
because my follow-up studies revealed
that even toddlers exhibited joy
from giving to others.
In one experiment, my colleagues
Kiley Hamlin, Lara Aknin and I
brought kids just under
the age of two into the lab.
Now, as you might imagine,
we had to work with a resource
that toddlers really care about,
so we used the toddler equivalent of gold,
namely, Goldfish crackers.
(Laughter)
We gave kids this windfall
of Goldfish for themselves
and a chance to give
some of their Goldfish away
to a puppet named Monkey.
(Video) Researcher: I found
even more treats,
and I’m going to give them all to you.
Toddler: Ooh. Thank you.
Researcher: But, you know,
I don’t see any more treats.
Will you give one to Monkey?
Toddler: Yeah.
Researcher: Yeah?
Toddler: Yeah.
Here.
Researcher: Ooh, yummy. Mmmm.
Toddler: All gone, he ate it.
Elizabeth Dunn: Now, we trained
research assistants to watch these videos
and code toddlers' emotional reactions.
Of course, we didn’t tell them
our hypotheses.
The data revealed that toddlers
were pretty happy
when they got this pile
of Goldfish for themselves,
but they were actually even happier
when they got to give
some of their Goldfish away.
And this warm glow of giving
persists into adulthood.
When we analyzed surveys
from more than 200,000 adults
across the globe,
we saw that nearly a third
of the world’s population
reported giving at least some money
to charity in the past month.
Remarkably, in every
major region of the world,
people who gave money to charity
were happier than those who did not,
even after taking into account
their own personal financial situation.
And this correlation wasn’t trivial.
It looked like giving to charity
made about the same
difference for happiness
as having twice as much income.
Now, as a researcher,
if you’re lucky enough
to stumble on an effect
that replicates around the world
in children and adults alike,
you start to wonder:
Could this be part of human nature?
We know that pleasure
reinforces adaptive behaviors
like eating and sex
that help perpetuate our species,
and it looked to me like giving
might be one of those behaviors.
I was really excited about these ideas,
and I wrote about them
in the “New York Times.”
One of the people who read this article
was my accountant.
(Laughter)
Yeah.
At tax time, I found myself
seated across from him,
watching as he slowly tapped his pen
on the charitable giving line
of my tax return
with this look of, like,
poorly concealed disapproval.
(Laughter)
Despite building my career
by showing how great giving can feel,
I actually wasn’t doing very much of it.
So I resolved to give more.
Around that time,
devastating stories about
the Syrian refugee crisis
were everywhere.
I really wanted to help,
so I pulled out my credit card.
I knew my donations would probably
make a difference for someone somewhere,
but going to the website
of an effective charity
and entering my Visa number
still just didn’t feel like enough.
That’s when I learned
about the Group of Five.
The Canadian government
allows any five Canadians
to privately sponsor a family of refugees.
You have to raise enough money
to support the family
for their first year in Canada,
and then they literally
get on a plane to your city.
One of the things that I think
is so cool about this program
is that no one is allowed to do it alone.
And instead of a Group of Five,
we ended up partnering
with a community organization
and forming a group of 25.
After almost two years
of paperwork and waiting,
we learned that our family
would be arriving in Vancouver
in less than six weeks.
They had four sons and a daughter,
so we raced to find them a place to live.
We were very lucky to find them a house,
but it needed quite a bit of work.
So my friends came out
on evenings and weekends
and painted and cleaned
and assembled furniture.
When the big day came,
we filled their fridge
with milk and fresh fruit
and headed to the airport
to meet our family.
It was a little overwhelming for everyone,
especially the four-year-old.
His mother was reunited with her sister
who had come to Canada earlier
through the same program.
They hadn’t seen each other in 15 years.
When you hear that more than
5.6 million refugees have fled Syria,
you’re faced with this tragedy
that the human brain hasn’t really
evolved to comprehend.
It’s so abstract.
Before, if any of us had been asked
to donate 15 hours a month
to help out with the refugee crisis,
we probably would have said no.
But as soon as we took our family
to their new home in Vancouver,
we all had the same realization:
we were just going to do whatever it took
to help them be happy.
This experience made me think
a little more deeply about my research.
Back in my lab,
we’d seen the benefits of giving spike
when people felt a real sense
of connection with those they were helping
and could easily envision
the difference they were making
in those individuals' lives.
For example, in one experiment,
we gave participants an opportunity
to donate a bit of money
to either UNICEF or Spread the Net.
We chose these charities intentionally,
because they were partners and shared
the same critically important goal
of promoting children’s health.
But I think UNICEF is just
such a big, broad charity
that it can be a little hard to envision
how your own small donation
will make a difference.
In contrast, Spread the Net
offers donors a concrete promise:
for every 10 dollars donated,
they provide one bed net
to protect a child from malaria.
We saw that the more money
people gave to Spread the Net,
the happier they reported
feeling afterward.
In contrast, this emotional
return on investment
was completely eliminated
when people gave money to UNICEF.
So this suggests that just
giving money to a worthwhile charity
isn’t always enough.
You need to be able to envision
how, exactly, your dollars
are going to make a difference.
Of course, the Group of Five program
takes this idea to a whole new level.
When we first took on this project,
we would talk about when
the refugees would arrive.
Now, we just refer to them as our family.
Recently, we took the kids ice skating,
and later that day,
my six-year-old, Oliver, asked me,
“Mommy, who is the oldest
kid in our family?”
I assumed he was talking
about his plethora of cousins,
and he was talking about them,
but also about our Syrian family.
Since our family arrived,
so many people and organizations
have offered to help,
providing everything
from free dental fillings
to summer camps.
It’s made me see the goodness
that exists in our community.
Thanks to one donation,
the kids got to go to bike camp,
and every day of the week,
some member of our group
tried to be there to cheer for them.
I happened to be there
the day the training wheels
were supposed to come off,
and let me tell you, the four-year-old
did not think this was a good idea.
So I went over and talked to him
about the long-term benefits
of riding without training wheels.
(Laughter)
Then I remembered that he was four
and barely spoke English.
So I reverted to two words
he definitely knew:
ice cream.
You try without training wheels,
I’ll buy you ice cream.
Here’s what happened next.
(Video) ED: Yes. Yeah!
Kid: I’m gonna try.
ED: Oh my God! Look at you go!
(Squealing) Look at you go!
You’re doing it all by yourself!
(Audience) (Laughter)
(Video) ED: Good job!
(Audience) (Laughter)
(Applause)
ED: So this is the kind of helping
that human beings evolved to enjoy,
but for 40 years,
Canada was the only country in the world
that allowed private citizens
to sponsor refugees.
Now – Canada!
(Applause)
It’s pretty great.
Now Australia and the UK
are starting up similar programs.
Just imagine how different
the refugee crisis could look
if more countries made this possible.
Creating these kinds of meaningful
connections between individuals
provides an opportunity
to deal with challenges
that feel overwhelming.
One of those challenges lies just blocks
from where I’m standing right now,
in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
By some measures, it’s the poorest
urban postal code in Canada.
We actually debated whether
to bring over a family of refugees,
because there are so many people
right here already struggling.
My friend Evan told me
that when he was a kid
and his parents drove
through this neighborhood,
he would duck down in the back seat.
But Evan’s parents
never would have guessed
that when he grew up,
he would open up the doors
of a local restaurant
and invite this community inside
to enjoy three-course dinners.
The program that Evan helped build
is called “Plenty of Plates,”
and the goal is not just
to provide free meals
but to create moments of connection
between people who otherwise
might never make eye contact.
Each night, a local business
sponsors the dinner
and sends a team of volunteers
who help make and serve the meal.
Afterward, the leftovers get distributed
to people who are out on the street,
and importantly, there’s enough money left
to provide a thousand free lunches
for this community
in the days that follow.
But the benefits of this program
extend beyond food.
For the volunteers, it provides
an opportunity to engage with people,
to sit down and hear their stories.
After this experience,
one volunteer changed his commute
so that instead of avoiding
this neighborhood,
he walks through it,
smiling or making eye contact
as he passes familiar faces.
All of us are capable
of finding joy in giving.
But we shouldn’t expect this
to happen automatically.
Spending money helping others
doesn’t necessarily promote happiness.
Instead, it matters how we do it.
And if we want people to give more,
we need to subvert the way we think
about charitable giving.
We need to create opportunities to give
that enable us to appreciate
our shared humanity.
If any of you work for a charity,
don’t reward your donors
with pens or calendars.
(Applause)
Reward them with the opportunity
to see the specific impact
that their generosity is having
and to connect with the individuals
and communities they’re helping.
We’re used to thinking about giving
as something we should do.
And it is.
But in thinking about it this way,
we’re missing out on one of
the best parts of being human:
that we have evolved to find joy
in helping others.
Let’s stop thinking about giving
as just this moral obligation
and start thinking of it
as a source of pleasure.
Thank you.
(Applause)