Why generosity breeds generosity
GIVING presents and making donations may not always make financial sense, but it makes us happy, experts have shown.
Using a procedure known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an international team of researchers has shown exactly which neural networks are activated when we perform a generous act. The team published its results in the specialist Nature journal.
The experiment was carried out in Zurich. Researchers first promised to send each of the 50 test participants 25 Swiss francs within a period of four weeks.
Half of the participants had to promise to pass the money on to other people, for example by giving a present to a friend. The other half, which served as a control group, had to pledge that they would spend the money on themselves.
The participants never actually saw the money, but immediately after making their promises they were asked to take part in a further piece of research: they had to make decisions where generosity again played a role. As they did that, researchers observed their brain activity using an fMRI device.
The group who had earlier been classified as generous also made more generous decisions in this second experiment. Following the exercise, they also reported that they were happier than the participants in the control group.
So Young Park of the University of Luebeck in Germany, who led the research team, says: “This allowed us to confirm that there is a connection between generous behaviour and happiness. Further, however, we were also able to show how our brain establishes this link.”
Among participants from the generous group, researchers found greater activity in a certain area of the brain called the temporoparietal junction (TPJ).
This is a brain structure that has already often been related to generous behaviour in the past, Park notes.
Researchers also found changes in the connectivity between the TPJ and the so-called ventral striatum, an area of the brain that causes pleasant feelings of happiness.
So whether it’s taking a friend out for dinner, buying a present for your partner or donating money to a homeless person, performing a generous act is officially a mood lifter.
These findings could be used to help people feel happier. – dpa