Buy a little happiness

Our national season of frenetic, panicked gift-giving (aka "the holidays") is finally over, and thank goodness, right? In our house, we celebrated with a glass of wine and a sigh of relief.

Well, it's a good thing we've been too lazy to put away the wrapping paper. Researchers from Harvard Business School and the University of British Columbia suggests that we shouldn't stop giving — in fact, we might want to amp it up. Spending money on other people makes us happier than spending money on ourselves, they say: in one experiment, they gave people $5 or $20, then instructed some of the volunteers to spend the money on themselves, the other group to spend it on someone else, by the end of the day. Although 63 percent of the participants thought that spending the money on themselves would make them happier, the researchers' interviews showed that only spending on other people made them happy. (Bundle adviser Dan Ariely's complete blog post on their experiment is here.)

Inspired? Good. Just one note of caution as you march generously into your day: give thoughtfully. "Random acts of kindness" also make the giver feel good, but they make the receiver paranoid and suspicious. Which would be reason #441 not to do something just because a bumper sticker says so.