Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness

Summary
*Each question (a-e) is worth 20 points

a) The main idea of the article ‘Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness' is
that the way people spend their money affects their level of happiness.
b) The initial support for this idea is given in paragraph 3. The research showed that
personal spending was unrelated to happiness, but higher prosocial spending was
associated with significantly greater happiness.

c) The author provides further support for his idea in paragraphs 4 - 5 by presenting
the results of the second experiment that showed that
employees who devoted more of their bonus to prosocial spending experienced
greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that
bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus
itself

d) Additional evidence in support of this idea appears in paragraph 6 . It shows that

significant main effect of spending instructions, whereby participants in the prosocial
spending condition reported greater post windfall happiness than did participants in
the personal spending condition Neither the main effect of windfall size nor the
Windfall Size x Spending Direction interaction approached significance.

e) The minor topics of the article are presented in paragraphs 7 and 8. They are
related to some conclusions with regard to happiness, people’s habits, and their
attitudes to prosocial spending and its benefits. These conclusions are:
1. how people choose to spend their money is at least as important as how much
money they make.
2.
encouraging people to invest income in others rather than in themselves—
may be worthwhile in the service of translating increased national wealth
into increased national happiness.
The article "Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness" discusses
the idea that the way people spend their money affects their level of
happiness. The author presents several experiments and research to
support his arguments.
The research showed that personal spending was unrelated to happiness,
but higher prosocial spending was associated with significantly greater
happiness.
The experiments also showed that employees who devoted more of their
bonus to prosocial spending experienced greater happiness after receiving
the bonus, and the way they spent that bonus was a more important
predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself.
In addition, the author conducts another experiment which results in
significant main effect of spending instructions, whereby participants in
the prosocial spending condition reported greater post windfall happiness
than did participants in the personal spending condition Neither the main
effect of windfall size nor the Windfall Size x Spending Direction
interaction approached significance.
The article also shows some conclusions regarding happiness, people’s
habits, and their attitudes to prosocial spending and its benefits.
For example, how people choose to spend their money is at least as
important as how much money they make. And also encouraging people to
invest income in others rather than in themselves—may be worthwhile in
the service of translating increased national wealth into increased national
happiness.