- We're gonna give this to you,
and let you make a decision.
- That's not fair.
- Feeling another person's pains sounds kind of painful,
and, yet, we still do it.
Every year, a quarter of Americans volunteer
to help others in need,
and two-thirds of them reported
that they helped their neighbor.
And when you take all of that empathy you're feeling,
and actually act on it,
well, that's this whole nother thing.
That is compassion.
See, acting on that compassion is stacked
with physical and mental benefits.
We found one study that showed
people who spent money on others
felt even happier than people who spent money on themselves.
And another study that found donating to charity
activates the same pleasure centers of our brains
as receiving money.
You can go ahead and read those two studies down below,
or you can keep watching
because we wanted to test them out for ourselves.
First, we rastled up some participants.
After giving them part one of our
officially, patented, happiness test,
we told them they'd be given an extra 50 dollars.
Today, we're gonna give you a choice.
- Okay.
- This is 50 dollars.
- Okay.
- And it's gonna be up to you what you do with it.
We're giving you the choice today
to donate this to a cause that you're passionate about
or you also have the option of keeping it
and taking it home.
- Okay.
- There's no right or wrong choice,
whichever one you make,
that's the decision that we want to see.
- All or none, one decision.
- [Researcher] 50 dollars.
- [Participant] I see.
- One way or the other.
- 'Kay.
- There you go.
Just go ahead, decide what you want to do with it
and put it in whichever box that you feel like doing.
- Okay.
- [Researcher] Okay.
- That one.
- That's the booth.
When you're in there, we won't be filming what you're doing,
just your face and nobody will know
whether you donate or keep it.
Nobody watching, alright?
- Okay.
- Do I need to put it in the envelope either way?
- [Researcher] Yes, please.
- Okay.
- After they made their decision,
they took the second part of the happiness test.
Now, at that point, we had all the data we needed
and considered the experiment complete.
But, we thought we'd gently
give them the opportunity to share
whether they donated or kept the money and why.
We told you that your decision was anonymous and it is.
We don't know what you decided to do.
But if you do want to share it,
we thought we'd give you the opportunity
to tell us what you chose and why.
- It was a little bit hard for me to decide,
to be honest, but I wound up donating the money
to the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
- If you don't mind, could you share with us
whether or not you donated today?
- Sure, I decided to donate the money.
It's just a little thing that is gonna
help families with special needs kids
like ones that I've work with.
- [Researcher] Would you like to share with us
what you decided to do?
- Yeah, I decided to keep it actually.
- Okay.
- Yeah, I have a car insurance bill that I have to pay so.
- I donated it.
I thought it'd be a kind of a dick move to keep it
but I also thought, you know, I'm not in that position.
I thought that 50 dollars for me wouldn't change my life.
- How do you feel?
- I decided to keep
because I'm a single mom
and I'm saving up to get my daughter braces.
- Those are expensive.
The results, people who kept the money for themselves,
saw their self-reported happiness go up
by an average of 4.3%.
So you decided to keep it, how do you feel afterwards?
- I feel like it was a confusing decision to make.
'Cause you want to help yourself, you know.
- 50 dollars is nice.
- Right.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Well, more than being nice, it's a...
It would be helpful. - Yes.
While people who showed compassion and donated
to a charity they cared about felt their happiness go up
almost twice as much,
with an average increase of 8.57%.
How do you feel now, after putting 50 dollars
in the donation box?
- So good.
- 50 dollars though is a good chunk of money.
- It's a nice chunk of money.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
I mean, it was that little smidgen of cool,
I'm not rich,
I work a couple jobs, I work really hard.
- So what overrode that?
- Well, I could really use that 50 bucks,
but I think should donate it.
I'm not gonna feel it.
Came in, it went out,
I was able to do something that I want to do
in a greater amount than I normally do.
I'm happy I was able to do that.
- There are a lot of people who could be using that money.
I mean, I could be using that money too.
- It's a nice amount of money.
- Yeah, I know, I mean, it's 50 bucks.
But at the end of the day,
I think the organization needs it,
and, I mean, I'm gay.
And they just give so much health resources
to people in need that they're just
a really good organization.
- The fact that you just handed me money
to be able to help out one of my former students is,
that's more than I could ask for.
It meant so much .
- It's hard to show compassion
because there's some cost associated with it.
This time, it was monetary.
Other times, you have to sacrifice your time and energy.
And often, showing compassion takes
an emotional toll as well.
But feeling empathy and acting on it,
just feels good when the day is done.
And that is what makes it worth the price.
♫ Soul Pancake