Study Says Gift Giving Makes Your Happiness Last Longer

Study Says Gift Giving Makes
Your Happiness Last Longer.
As if you needed another reason to
be charitable this Christmas season ...
new research says people who
give, rather than receive, are
happier for a longer period of time.
The analysis can be found in the Journal
of the Association for Psychological Science.
For the study, one group of
people received money to
buy things for themselves.
The other group was given
money and required to
give it to someone else.
A second test had people play a puzzle
game and chose whether they wanted
to donate or keep the money they won.
In both tests, happiness was found to
fade at a slower rate for those who
gave the money to other people.
According to one of the study's researchers,
Ed O'Brien, "repeated giving," can be a
"fresh" and "pleasurable" experience.
Repeated giving, even in identical
ways to identical others, may
continue to feel relatively fresh
and relatively pleasurable the
more that we do it, Ed O'Brien, via AOL