WASHINGTON — Money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else, according to researchers.
Spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found on Thursday.
Their experiments on more than 630 Americans showed they were measurably happier when they spent money on others --- even if they thought spending the money on themselves would make them happier.
“We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn,” said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia.
They asked their 600 volunteers first to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and detail their monthly spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.
“Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not,” Dunn said in a statement.
Dunn’s team also surveyed 16 employees at a company in Boston before and after they received an annual profit-sharing bonus of between $3,000 and $8,000.
“Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social 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,” they wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
“Finally, participants who were randomly (随机地) required to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those required to spend money on themselves,” they said.
They gave their volunteers $5 or $20 and half got clear instructions on how to spend it. Those who spent the money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it.
“These findings suggest that very minor adjustment in spending allocations (分配) --- as little as $5 --- may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day,” Dunn said.
This could also explain why people are no happier even though US society is richer.
“Indeed, although real incomes have increased dramatically in recent decades, happiness levels have remained largely flat within developed countries across time,” they wrote.
小题1:
Dune’s experiment on 630 Americans was to ________.

A．help people make careful plans for their money	B．encourage people to be generous to others
C．see how to spend money is important to happiness	D．test whether $5 is enough to buy happiness

小题2:
What can we conclude according to the experiment?

A．Happiness largely depends on the size of your bonus money.

B．Happiness, as a matter of fact, has nothing to do with money.

C．The more money you give away, the happier person you will be.

D．Spending money for the good of society will make you happier.

小题3:
How many different ways are used by the researchers to test their theory?

A．Two.

B．Three.

C．Four.

D．Five.

小题4:
The last sentence of the passage means _______.

A．happiness does not necessary increase as money grows

B．people in richer countries actually have more problems

C．fast economic growth has a bad effect on people’s life

D．great increase of income contributes to keeping happiness level stable