Hi. I'm Paul Krismer, your happiness
expert, and this week we're gonna talk
about how money changes the way we feel, at least in part. We're going to talk
about how these researchers who happen to be
economists wanted to allow people to
spend a little bit of money and see how
it made them feel. So they surveyed them
for their levels of personal happiness,
gave these people—young students on
campus—20 bucks and said go spend 20
bucks on yourself and then come back.
When the students came back they
surveyed them for their levels of
personal happiness and sure enough, as
expected, the students were happier. Yay! A different group of randomly selected
students they surveyed for their
happiness, gave them 20 bucks, but this
time they said, "Go and spend the money on someone else who has no ability to repay you."
So they wander off onto campus, find some
stranger and do something that costs
around 20 bucks for that person and when
they came back to the researchers they
were surveyed for their personal
happiness. They weren't a little bit
happier; they were a lot happier!
Well, what the heck is going on with that?!
It's insane. These kids should have been
happier spending money on themselves and for some perfect stranger. But that's not
the case. And this video today is all
about why we get happy when we serve
other people.
As a coach, public speaker and
best-selling author,
I teach topics just like this one all
around the world, so stay tuned and I'll
give you practical tools that you can
use to make both yourself and those
around you both happier and more
successful. So why is it that these kids
were happier spending money on others
than on themselves. The researchers were
curious. They thought it was irrational
for that to happen and so they thought
maybe if they gave the kids a thousand
dollars to spend on themselves they
would have been really really happy and
if they spent $1,000 on a complete
stranger they'd be miserable. Nobody
was going to give these guys that much
money for an experiment so they
partnered with some universities in very
poor countries—India and Nigeria—and
this time with the same $20 they knew
that the $20 went so much further. In
Nigeria, for example, it will feed a family of four
for a week. It was a lot of money. So same thing—survey for happiness, give them 20 bucks,
have them spend it on themselves,
survey them again and the people were happier
as predicted. But bizarrely, spending 20
bucks on a total stranger in Nigeria
made people a lot happier. Well what's
going on with all of this. I want you to
watch this brief little video that I'm
using here with permission from the
producers and you're going to maybe thrown off—the woman is speaking Dutch—but
watch what happens to these children as
they go through this little experiment.
Okay you over there and you over here.
Let's see. I'll help you here. We're going to
take some photos, but the problem is the
photographer is late. I'm going to look for
the photographer and then we'll take the
photos. Meanwhile, you can have a snack.
Okay, I'm gonna go and I'll be back in
five minutes.
Okay, here I go. Count to three.
Okay, so that's really cute isn't it?
Those children are really lovely and
they do nice things for one another. They
share. It's all very sweet and wonderful
and children that are the age of these
kids in the video are probably socially
conditioned, right? That's, they've been
taught that they should share. That's why
they're being all kind right? That's what
we think. Watch this next video and
in this video there is a parent in the
room—the mother of these little infants—
but she makes neither verbal contact or
eye contact with their infant. And
similarly, the researcher—the guy
 in the red sweater—doesn't
speak to the kids, doesn't look at the
kids. Watch what happens
Oh.
Okay, it's so crazily cute. I mean, those
children are just so sweet, but nobody's
gonna tell me that those little wee
infants were socially conditioned to
behave that way. Instead, something innate in them made them want to help these
perfect strangers. Why would they do it?
Again, it's irrational. They get no
advantage to helping this person and the
truth is we really don't know why. All we
know for sure is that altruistic
behaviors make us feel good. And the best
we can come up with is that there's an
evolutionary purpose, that when we behave
selflessly and give to others with not
necessarily any expectation of return,
evolution found that there was a reason
to reward us for that behavior, and it's
likely that as tribal people we needed
to be able to help one another. One day
after another, giving generously and if I
helped you today you'd help me tomorrow.
And we'd all help somebody else on the
third day and this behavior of what goes
around comes around was obviously
helpful for survival and evolution,
taught us to do it by making us feel
good in the moment. So we don't know
exactly why, but that's the theory and we
know for a fact that altruistic
behaviors make us feel good. So if you
want to be happy, go be nice to other
people. That's all there is to it. Go be
nice this week. I'm providing you an
exercise, downloadable at the link below,
that's really gonna get your mind
turning deeply about what altruism means to you and what benefits you can get
from it. I'm Paul Krismer, your happiness expert.
I love giving you this kind of content.
If you like it, share it, like it and help
other people find out. If you want to see
more content like this, subscribe to my
channel and you'll get a video every
Sunday morning. Thanks for watching.
Bye for now.
