Why Buying a Round Feels Good

My favorite positive psychology study is one published in Science by Liz Dunn and her colleagues at UBC. They found that people who spent their salary bonuses on other people were happier than those who spent it on themselves. And they did an experiment in which they gave students five dollars or twenty dollars and instructed them to either spend the money on themselves or on someone else. Like rational economists, other students guessed that it would make people happiest to get the larger amount and to spend it on themselves. But that is not what happened. Instead, the students were happiest when they bought someone else a gift, regardless of the amount. These findings are part of a heartening wave of new research suggesting that human beings are chock-full of mechanisms designed to make us feel good when we cement our bonds with those around us.

Excerpt from Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life by Douglas T. Kenrick