Helping others makes us happier -- but it matters how we do it

My book with my longtime collaborator Michael Norton (of Harvard Business School) provides an overview of our research showing how and why spending money on others promotes happiness. In addition, we offer four other research-based principles for spending money in happier ways, including buying experiences and delaying consumption. People seem to find it useful. (For example, when it was published, it was selected by the Washington Post as one of their "top 20 books every leader should read").

This brief paper, created for the United Nations 2019 World Happiness Report, provides a detailed yet accessible discussion of the relationship between generosity and happiness, including an assessment of the methodological strengths and weaknesses of research in this area.

If you're interested in digging more deeply into the key catalysts that help turn good deeds into good feelings, this paper provides a thorough review of all existing research in this area, as well as presenting our newest data on this topic. This paper utilizes current best practices in psychology, including pre-registration and openly available data.

If you'd like to learn more about private refugee sponsorship in Canada, including a brief history of this program, this website is a great resource.

One of the great strokes of luck in my life was getting to work on my undergraduate honors thesis with Dan Gilbert. His groundbreaking work on happiness has shaped my thinking on this topic ever since. When people ask me to recommend a book on happiness — out of the many thousands that have been written — this book is always my first pick.

My sister-in-law Samantha Gill took almost all of the photos in my talk of both our refugee sponsorship group and the Plenty of Plates program. See more of her work on Instagram!