Hi,
I'm writing this blog post in English first time in a half year.
Today, I'd like to introduce you one TED talk regarding happiness.
Here is the video entitled "How to buy happiness".
Actually, this video ends up commercial stuff. The speaker seems to have something to do with a donation service.
However, this topic is so controversial and it will be interesting to discuss about.
The point is to spend money to the other makes us happier than to spend money to ourselves.
He illustrated above by doing one experiment, which the speaker gives money to some people and tells "Spend this money ($5) on yourself.", and to others "Spend this money ($5) on somebody else.". He asked respondents how happy you are before and after the experiment, and tried to measure how their happiness changes.
In the result, people who spent the $5 on somebody else got happier than people who spent $5 on themselves even if a thing he/she spent money to was the same, i.e., people who spent the money to buy coffee at Starbucks for somebody else got happier than people who spent the money to buy coffee at Starbucks for themselves.
What do you think about this?
When I watched this video, it hit me that 1) the way to measure happiness should be opened, otherwise, we can't tell if the "happiness" he said is really "happiness" we think, and, 2) this experiment can show us correlation between spending money to others and getting happy, but that can show us only correlation, not cause and effect.
As for 1), it is fine because they don't need to do disclose the method to measure happiness because that video did include advertisement, and he didn't have time enough to show it out.
As for 2, I don't think this experiment can show us cause and effect between spending and happiness. For example, spending money on somebody who each respondent is familiar with may work well, but spending on somebody who each respondent is not familiar with may not work.
In addition, the respondents got money which should be spent on by he experiment side, but we can't get money like this way as you know. I guess only people who have leeway can spend money on someone else without any personal greed.
This sort of topic is very very interesting, but most of experiments are often questionable. I usually enjoy to think and discuss though.
Should you have any opinion, please leave your comment here.
Thanks!
