INTRODUCTION An essential part of life for the human race is the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is a lot of research on how to reach for it. In the past there have been many claims on happiness. One of the most common believes is that happiness can be purchased. According to Dunn, Aknin & Norton (2008) it is not how much money is available but how the money is spent that has a positive effect on happiness. So they hypothesized that spending money on others increases happiness more than spending money on oneself. But how is it that people then do not change their behavior? This question was answered by a study that found people seem to believe that more money makes happier as well as personal spending is better for one than pro-social spending. That is why the researchers suggest …show more content…
It’s the recipient that counts Secondly, it is interesting to see if there is a difference of the effect of pro-social spending on happiness depending on who exactly is being spoiled. From an experiment where participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions in which they had to recall a spending on either a weak social tie or a strong social tie and later indicated their affect levels on a modified Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), they found a sufficient statistically significant effect of strong social ties on happiness (Aknin, Sandstorm, Dunn & Norton, 2011). To that end, it was concluded that indeed a higher level of intimacy predicts more happiness when money is spent on others (Aknin, Sandstorm, Dunn & Norton, 2011).
Moderators and mediators of pro-social spending and