Which Features of Prosocial Spending Recollections Predict Post-Recall Happiness? A Pre-registered Investigation

Abstract

People frequently spend money on others and research shows that such prosocial spending often promotes the benefactor’s happiness, even sometimes when reflecting upon past prosocial purchases. But on whom and what do people generally spend their money? And what features of prosocial spending memories are associated with greater post-recall happiness? In a pre-registered examination, human coders and a text analysis software coded over 2,500 prosocial spending recollections for information regarding the target, content, and presence of five theoretically motivated dimensions: affiliation, volition, impact, authenticity, and level of detail. Exploratory analyses revealed that people often recalled buying gifts or food and typically spent money on significant others, friends, or children. Consistent with the pre-registered hypotheses, higher levels of volition and impact were associated with greater post-recall happiness (rs: .05 – .07), controlling for pre-recall happiness. However, in contrast to the pre-registered hypotheses, affiliation, authenticity, and level of detail did not predict greater happiness. These findings illuminate some key characteristics of prosocial purchases and the most rewarding features of people’s prosocial spending recollections.

Better to give? A systematic review of prosocial spending and happiness

“…For instance, different measurements of happiness (Kim et al ., 2022), consideration of various types of prosocial spending (Li et al ., 2022), and selection of different experimental paradigms for prosocial spending (Aknin et al ., 2020) require further attention from future researchers. Some researchers have focused on whether individuals' prosocial spending choices are self‐determined (e.g., Cash et al ., 2022; Lok & Dunn, 2020), but their definitions of choice and volition are somewhat simplistic. Recently, Moche & Västfjäll (2021) investigated and compared how active, passive, and default choices affect the relationship between prosocial spending and personal happiness.…”

“…High levels of volition and perceived impact promote higher happiness after prosocial spending. Cash et al (2022) explored the moderating effect of volition and perceived impact through a pre-registration survey. Participants recalled and described recent prosocial spending memories, and the researchers distinguished between spending on themselves or others, and the volition and perceived level of impact of the participants' prosocial spending.…”

“…Of particular interest is prosocial spending, which involves spending money to benefit others. Extensive empirical evidence has been gathered on the correlation between prosocial spending and happiness (Aknin & Dunn, 2013; Aknin, Wiwad & Hanniball, 2018; Cash, Aknin & Proulx, 2022). These studies consistently suggest that spending money on others leads to higher levels of happiness than spending money on oneself.…”

Pro-sociality and happiness across national cultures: A hierarchical linear model

“…Happiness was assessed by one item (see a WVS-based study, Bruni & Stanca, 2006) -"Taking all things together, would you say you are Very happy (= 1), Rather happy (= 2), Not very happy (= 3), or Not at all happy (= 4)." To make the score meaning clearer than before, this study re-coded the 4-point Likert responding scale to be: 1 = not at all happy; 4 = very happy.…”