If you want to be Happy, Help Others
Research has shown it's the path to contentment
What do we want?
If you think on this for a second, what’s one thing we all want?
I’m sure a few of you will have answered ‘happiness’. And so the follow-up question would be, how do we get it?
I’ve been reading up on some psychology texts lately and have come across the term ‘affective forecasting.’ It means ‘predicting how we will feel in a given circumstance.’
It’s somewhat a subconscious thing too, we make many, if not most, of our decisions without too much conscious thought and so we want to find the easiest and shortest path to feeling content.
Life, as we all know though, loves to throw many spanners into the works. Ah, sorry, this is for mostly an American audience, so I should say, throw wrenches into the works and so we end up putting time into things that don’t end up leading to long-lasting happiness.
Happiness is…
Happiness is obviously a subjective experience.
If I asked you whether you would prefer to be an A-list actor doing million-dollar movies or suffering a life-changing accident that left you paralyzed, well, you’d obviously choose the former.
In the 1970s, Philip Brickman did a study on measuring the happiness of lottery winners and paraplegic accident victims and, surprisingly found that “in terms of their abilities to enjoy everyday pleasures, there was no difference between the lottery winners and the accident victims.”
Animal altruism
I’m good friends with a park ranger here in Poland. His main area of study is bears, followed by wolves and birds. We got to talking one night about what’s common between animals and humans and he got a little annoyed over the idea that people don’t see animals as equals.
He told me that altruism and love are as obvious in the animal kingdom as in the human world, maybe even more so since animals don’t tend to kill their own kind and only kill other animals for food.
He showed me a few studies regarding this and while I agreed with him I have to admit that I was a bit surprised to see such overwhelming evidence of altruism among animals such as bears, wolves, monkeys, and wild cats.
But, that only shows my lack of knowledge on the subject and so I was happy to be put straight.
Human greed
It got me thinking then about the greed we see in human society that we don’t see in the animal kingdom. Animals take what they can use and they don’t store things to accumulate additional benefits.
Granted, some animals certainly do store food for future use and the reason they store so much is because they tend to misplace and forget some places and thus have to store extra.
It’s not that they’re hoarding like humans do, it’s just that they forget many of their hiding places. Indeed, there’s some good research out there that shows that forests all over owe quite a bit to wee squirrels losing their nuts.
Materialism v altruism
We know from many studies that having more wealth and more material things does not lead to happiness and we also know that many studies have shown that being altruistic does lead to feeling happy.
Let’s have a look at some of the latter.
Back in 2008, Science.org published a study titled “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.”
University students were given money in an envelope, half of them were told to spend the money on anything for themselves while the other half were told to spend it on someone else or to donate it to charity.
Based on answers obtained from a questionnaire filled out at the end of the day, the students who were told to spend the money on others, or charity, were deemed to be happier than those who spent the money on themselves.
In a 2012 study published by Plos One, entitled “Giving Leads to Happiness in Young Children” it was found that “the happiness-inducing characteristic of generosity may even be hard-wired into human nature.” The study showed that in kids younger than two, those who gave away treats to their playmates were found to be happier than those who received treats.
The researchers also found that what they called ‘costly giving’ i.e. giving away something that is somewhat sacrificial, or costing, gave greater happiness to the giver.
In their words “Giving away something that is yours, as opposed to giving away something that isn’t yours, brings more emotional reward.”
Crisis
Beginning in 1960s, the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Centre has conducted an absolute boatload of research into how we behave in times of crisis.
They have found that “When faced with disasters, the vast majority of us remain calm and help one another. Most of us engage naturally in altruistic and pro-social activities — in giving, volunteering, sharing goods and services, even in truly heroic acts that may cost us and even expose us to risk.”
This all leads me then to the somewhat anarchistic viewpoint that altruism is actually a baseline and animalistic characteristic we all share.
It would seem to me that being selfish and only concerned with our own material wealth is not at all how we were built to live and survive.
Additional research
I could spend all day going into more research on why altruism is of great benefit to us all. Below you can read more about studies connected with relationships, well-being and mental health benefits.
Altruism, happiness, and health: it’s good to be good
The influence of altruism on the mental health of university students during the COVID-19 pandemic
Would you like to talk more about altruism and happiness? Contact me here if you’d like to book a one-on-one life coaching/counseling session with me.
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I can personally attest to this theory. I’ve been in a place where I was making more money than I ever thought imaginable and made very little time for others. I was miserable.