Investing in Others Will Make the World a Better Place

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

A lot of the research that we do is your you are a person, you have money. What should you do with your money to maximize your happiness? And in it are other people you know, if you get an experience,. You now may you going to dinner with friends or with your partner, but it's not typically central to the other things. On average, meaning not for everyone, and not the time, but on average, if you take five dollars and use it on somebody else, you get more happiness than if you use it on yourself.

Can money really buy happiness? Michael Norton is a social science researcher who studies how we feel about our spending decisions. His work explores questions like: What’s the best way to spend your cash? How much should you donate to charity? Do credit cards make us unhappy? In this episode, Michael shares the sometimes-surprising findings that can help you use our money to improve your life. Michael is a professor of business administration in the marketing unit at the Harvard Business School. Prior to joining HBS, Michael was a Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. His work has been published in a number of leading academic journals and has been covered in media outlets such as the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman