In a six-month experiment, people who received cash transfers of $10,000 generally reported feeling happier than people who did not receive the payment.
A study published Monday in the journal PNAS looked at the effects of giving 200 people a one-time sum of $10,000.
The money, which came from two anonymous wealthy donors, was distributed on PayPal through a partnership with the organization TED.
Participants who got the money were required to spend it all within three months. They recorded how happy they felt on a monthly basis, as did a control group of 100 people who did not get any money. The researchers measured happiness by having people rank how satisfied they were with their lives on a scale of 1 to 7 and how frequently they experienced positive feelings, like happiness, and negative feelings, such as sadness, on a scale of 1 to 5.
The group that got $10,000 reported higher levels of happiness than those who did not after their three months of spending. Then, after three more months had passed, the recipients still reported levels of happiness higher than when the experiment started.
However, people with household incomes above $123,000 did not report noticeable improvements in their happiness.
Dwyer said he thinks higher sums — closer to, say, the recent $2.04 billion Powerball lottery jackpot — would yield even bigger boosts in happiness.
"Typically, people who do win the lottery are happier many, many years later," he said.
飲水都會令人更加快樂
