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  • So, I have a pretty fun job,

  • which is to figure out what makes people happy.

  • It's so fun, it might almost seen a little frivolous,

  • especially at a time where we're being confronted

  • with some pretty depressing headlines.

  • But it turns out that studying happiness might provide a key

  • to solving some of the toughest problems we're facing.

  • It's taken me almost a decade to figure this out.

  • Pretty early on in my career,

  • I published a paper in "Science" with my collaborators,

  • entitled, "Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness."

  • I was very confident in this conclusion,

  • except for one thing:

  • it didn't seem to apply to me.

  • (Laughter)

  • I hardly ever gave money to charity,

  • and when I did,

  • I didn't feel that warm glow I was expecting.

  • So I started to wonder if maybe there was something wrong with my research

  • or something wrong with me.

  • My own lackluster emotional response to giving was especially puzzling

  • because my follow-up studies revealed that even toddlers exhibited joy

  • from giving to others.

  • In one experiment, my colleagues Kiley Hamlin, Lara Aknin and I

  • brought kids just under the age of two into the lab.

  • Now, as you might imagine,

  • we had to work with a resource that toddlers really care about,

  • so we used the toddler equivalent of gold,

  • namely, Goldfish crackers.

  • (Laughter)

  • We gave kids this windfall of Goldfish for themselves

  • and a chance to give some of their Goldfish away

  • to a puppet named Monkey.

  • (Video) Researcher: I found even more treats,

  • and I'm going to give them all to you.

  • Toddler: Ooh. Thank you.

  • Researcher: But, you know, I don't see any more treats.

  • Will you give one to Monkey?

  • Toddler: Yeah. Researcher: Yeah?

  • Toddler: Yeah.

  • Here.

  • Researcher: Ooh, yummy. Mmmm.

  • Toddler: All gone, he ate it.

  • Elizabeth Dunn: Now, we trained research assistants to watch these videos

  • and code toddlers' emotional reactions.

  • Of course, we didn't tell them our hypotheses.

  • The data revealed that toddlers were pretty happy

  • when they got this pile of Goldfish for themselves,

  • but they were actually even happier

  • when they got to give some of their Goldfish away.

  • And this warm glow of giving persists into adulthood.

  • When we analyzed surveys from more than 200,000 adults

  • across the globe,

  • we saw that nearly a third of the world's population

  • reported giving at least some money to charity in the past month.

  • Remarkably, in every major region of the world,

  • people who gave money to charity were happier than those who did not,

  • even after taking into account their own personal financial situation.

  • And this correlation wasn't trivial.

  • It looked like giving to charity

  • made about the same difference for happiness

  • as having twice as much income.

  • Now, as a researcher,

  • if you're lucky enough to stumble on an effect

  • that replicates around the world in children and adults alike,

  • you start to wonder:

  • Could this be part of human nature?

  • We know that pleasure reinforces adaptive behaviors

  • like eating and sex

  • that help perpetuate our species,

  • and it looked to me like giving might be one of those behaviors.

  • I was really excited about these ideas,

  • and I wrote about them in the "New York Times."

  • One of the people who read this article

  • was my accountant.

  • (Laughter)

  • Yeah.

  • At tax time, I found myself seated across from him,

  • watching as he slowly tapped his pen

  • on the charitable giving line of my tax return

  • with this look of, like,

  • poorly concealed disapproval.

  • (Laughter)

  • Despite building my career by showing how great giving can feel,

  • I actually wasn't doing very much of it.

  • So I resolved to give more.

  • Around that time,

  • devastating stories about the Syrian refugee crisis

  • were everywhere.

  • I really wanted to help,

  • so I pulled out my credit card.

  • I knew my donations would probably make a difference for someone somewhere,

  • but going to the website of an effective charity

  • and entering my Visa number

  • still just didn't feel like enough.

  • That's when I learned about the Group of Five.

  • The Canadian government allows any five Canadians

  • to privately sponsor a family of refugees.

  • You have to raise enough money to support the family

  • for their first year in Canada,

  • and then they literally get on a plane to your city.

  • One of the things that I think is so cool about this program

  • is that no one is allowed to do it alone.

  • And instead of a Group of Five,

  • we ended up partnering with a community organization

  • and forming a group of 25.

  • After almost two years of paperwork and waiting,

  • we learned that our family would be arriving in Vancouver

  • in less than six weeks.

  • They had four sons and a daughter,

  • so we raced to find them a place to live.

  • We were very lucky to find them a house,

  • but it needed quite a bit of work.

  • So my friends came out on evenings and weekends

  • and painted and cleaned and assembled furniture.

  • When the big day came,

  • we filled their fridge with milk and fresh fruit

  • and headed to the airport to meet our family.

  • It was a little overwhelming for everyone,

  • especially the four-year-old.

  • His mother was reunited with her sister

  • who had come to Canada earlier through the same program.

  • They hadn't seen each other in 15 years.

  • When you hear that more than 5.6 million refugees have fled Syria,

  • you're faced with this tragedy

  • that the human brain hasn't really evolved to comprehend.

  • It's so abstract.

  • Before, if any of us had been asked to donate 15 hours a month

  • to help out with the refugee crisis,

  • we probably would have said no.

  • But as soon as we took our family to their new home in Vancouver,

  • we all had the same realization:

  • we were just going to do whatever it took to help them be happy.

  • This experience made me think a little more deeply about my research.

  • Back in my lab,

  • we'd seen the benefits of giving spike

  • when people felt a real sense of connection with those they were helping

  • and could easily envision the difference they were making

  • in those individuals' lives.

  • For example, in one experiment,

  • we gave participants an opportunity to donate a bit of money

  • to either UNICEF or Spread the Net.

  • We chose these charities intentionally,

  • because they were partners and shared the same critically important goal

  • of promoting children's health.

  • But I think UNICEF is just such a big, broad charity

  • that it can be a little hard to envision

  • how your own small donation will make a difference.

  • In contrast, Spread the Net offers donors a concrete promise:

  • for every 10 dollars donated,

  • they provide one bed net to protect a child from malaria.

  • We saw that the more money people gave to Spread the Net,

  • the happier they reported feeling afterward.

  • In contrast, this emotional return on investment

  • was completely eliminated when people gave money to UNICEF.

  • So this suggests that just giving money to a worthwhile charity

  • isn't always enough.

  • You need to be able to envision

  • how, exactly, your dollars are going to make a difference.

  • Of course, the Group of Five program takes this idea to a whole new level.

  • When we first took on this project,

  • we would talk about when the refugees would arrive.

  • Now, we just refer to them as our family.

  • Recently, we took the kids ice skating,

  • and later that day, my six-year-old, Oliver, asked me,

  • "Mommy, who is the oldest kid in our family?"

  • I assumed he was talking about his plethora of cousins,

  • and he was talking about them,

  • but also about our Syrian family.

  • Since our family arrived,

  • so many people and organizations have offered to help,

  • providing everything from free dental fillings

  • to summer camps.

  • It's made me see the goodness that exists in our community.

  • Thanks to one donation,

  • the kids got to go to bike camp,

  • and every day of the week,

  • some member of our group tried to be there to cheer for them.

  • I happened to be there

  • the day the training wheels were supposed to come off,

  • and let me tell you, the four-year-old did not think this was a good idea.

  • So I went over and talked to him

  • about the long-term benefits of riding without training wheels.

  • (Laughter)

  • Then I remembered that he was four and barely spoke English.

  • So I reverted to two words he definitely knew:

  • ice cream.

  • You try without training wheels, I'll buy you ice cream.

  • Here's what happened next.

  • (Video) ED: Yes. Yeah!

  • Kid: I'm gonna try.

  • ED: Oh my God! Look at you go!

  • (Squealing) Look at you go! You're doing it all by yourself!

  • (Audience) (Laughter)

  • (Video) ED: Good job!

  • (Audience) (Laughter)

  • (Applause)

  • ED: So this is the kind of helping that human beings evolved to enjoy,

  • but for 40 years,

  • Canada was the only country in the world

  • that allowed private citizens to sponsor refugees.

  • Now -- Canada!

  • (Applause)

  • It's pretty great.

  • Now Australia and the UK are starting up similar programs.

  • Just imagine how different the refugee crisis could look

  • if more countries made this possible.

  • Creating these kinds of meaningful connections between individuals

  • provides an opportunity to deal with challenges

  • that feel overwhelming.

  • One of those challenges lies just blocks from where I'm standing right now,

  • in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

  • By some measures, it's the poorest urban postal code in Canada.

  • We actually debated whether to bring over a family of refugees,

  • because there are so many people right here already struggling.

  • My friend Evan told me that when he was a kid

  • and his parents drove through this neighborhood,

  • he would duck down in the back seat.

  • But Evan's parents never would have guessed

  • that when he grew up,

  • he would open up the doors of a local restaurant

  • and invite this community inside to enjoy three-course dinners.

  • The program that Evan helped build is called "Plenty of Plates,"

  • and the goal is not just to provide free meals

  • but to create moments of connection

  • between people who otherwise might never make eye contact.

  • Each night, a local business sponsors the dinner

  • and sends a team of volunteers

  • who help make and serve the meal.

  • Afterward, the leftovers get distributed to people who are out on the street,

  • and importantly, there's enough money left

  • to provide a thousand free lunches for this community

  • in the days that follow.

  • But the benefits of this program extend beyond food.

  • For the volunteers, it provides an opportunity to engage with people,

  • to sit down and hear their stories.

  • After this experience, one volunteer changed his commute

  • so that instead of avoiding this neighborhood,

  • he walks through it,

  • smiling or making eye contact as he passes familiar faces.

  • All of us are capable of finding joy in giving.

  • But we shouldn't expect this to happen automatically.

  • Spending money helping others doesn't necessarily promote happiness.

  • Instead, it matters how we do it.

  • And if we want people to give more,

  • we need to subvert the way we think about charitable giving.

  • We need to create opportunities to give

  • that enable us to appreciate our shared humanity.

  • If any of you work for a charity,

  • don't reward your donors with pens or calendars.

  • (Applause)

  • Reward them with the opportunity

  • to see the specific impact that their generosity is having

  • and to connect with the individuals and communities they're helping.

  • We're used to thinking about giving as something we should do.

  • And it is.

  • But in thinking about it this way,

  • we're missing out on one of the best parts of being human:

  • that we have evolved to find joy in helping others.

  • Let's stop thinking about giving as just this moral obligation

  • and start thinking of it as a source of pleasure.

  • Thank you.

  • (Applause)

So, I have a pretty fun job,

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