演讲者：Michael Norton，Social science researcher
Through clever studies, Michael Norton studies how we feel about what we buy and spend.
英国社会创新家迈克尔·诺顿分享了一个很有趣的调查结果。调查发现，当你不把钱花在自己身上的时候，金钱的确可以买到幸福。现在请仔细倾听，看看这些数据是如何说明具有利他主义的消费是如何惠及自己，惠及工作以及他人的。
So I want to talk today about money and happiness, which are two things that a lot of us spend a lot of our time thinking about, either trying to earn them or trying to increase them. And a lot of us resonate with this phrase. So we see it in religions and self-help books, that money can't buy happiness.
And I want to suggest today that, in fact, that's wrong. (Laughter) I'm at a business school, so that's what we do. So that's wrong, and, in fact, if you think that, you're actually just not spending it right. So that instead of spending it the way you usually spend it, maybe if you spent it differently, that might work a little bit better.
And before I tell you the ways that you can spend it that will make you happier, let's think about the ways we usually spend it that don't, in fact, make us happier. We had a little natural experiment. So CNN, a little while ago, wrote this interesting article on what happens to people when they win the lottery. It turns out people think when they win the lottery their lives are going to be amazing.
This article's about how their lives get ruined. So what happens when people win the lottery is, number one, they spend all the money and go into debt, and number two, all of their friends and everyone they've ever met find them and bug them for money.
And it ruins their social relationships, in fact. So they have more debt and worse friendships than they had before they won the lottery. What was interesting about the article was people started commenting on the article, readers of the thing. And instead of talking about how it had made them realize that money doesn't lead to happiness, everyone instantly started saying, "You know what I would do if I won the lottery ... ?" and fantasizing about what they'd do.
And here's just two of the ones we saw that are just really interesting to think about. One person wrote in, "When I win, I'm going to buy my own little mountain and have a little house on top." (Laughter) And another person wrote, "I would fill a big bathtub with money and get in the tub while smoking a big fat cigar and sipping a glass of champagne."
This is even worse now: "Then I'd have a picture taken and dozens of glossies made. Anyone begging for money or trying to extort from me would receive a copy of the picture and nothing else." (Laughter) And so many of the comments were exactly of this type, where people got money and, in fact, it made them antisocial.
So I told you that it ruins people's lives and that their friends bug them. It also, money often makes us feel very selfish and we do things only for ourselves. Well maybe the reason that money doesn't make us happy is that we're always spending it on the wrong things, and in particular, that we're always spending it on ourselves.
And we thought, I wonder what would happen if we made people spend more of their money on other people. So instead of being antisocial with your money, what if you were a little more prosocial with your money? And we thought, let's make people do it and see what happens.
So let's have some people do what they usually do and spend money on themselves, and let's make some people give money away, and measure their happiness and see if, in fact, they get happier. So the first way that we did this. On one Vancouver morning, we went out on the campus at University of British Columbia and we approached people and said, "Do you want to be in an experiment?"
They said, "Yes." We asked them how happy they were, and then we gave them an envelope. And one of the envelopes had things in it that said, "By 5:00 pm today, spend this money on yourself." So we gave some examples of what you could spend it on. Other people, in the morning, got a slip of paper that said, "By 5:00 pm today, spend this money on somebody else." Also inside the envelope was money.
And we manipulated how much money we gave them. So some people got this slip of paper and five dollars. Some people got this slip of paper and 20 dollars. We let them go about their day. They did whatever they wanted to do. We found out that they did in fact spend it in the way that we asked them to.
We called them up at night and asked them, "What'd you spend it on, and how happy do you feel now?" What did they spend it on? Well these are college undergrads, so a lot of what they spent it on for themselves were things like earrings and makeup. One woman said she bought a stuffed animal for her niece. People gave money to homeless people. Huge effect here of Starbucks. (Laughter)
So if you give undergraduates five dollars, it looks like coffee to them and they run over to Starbucks and spend it as fast as they can. But some people bought a coffee for themselves, the way they usually would, but other people said that they bought a coffee for somebody else. So the very same purchase, just targeted toward yourself or targeted toward somebody else. What did we find when we called them back at the end of the day?
People who spent money on other people got happier. People who spent money on themselves, nothing happened. It didn't make them less happy, it just didn't do much for them. And the other thing we saw is the amount of money doesn't matter that much. So people thought that 20 dollars would be way better than five dollars.
In fact, it doesn't matter how much money you spent. What really matters is that you spent it on somebody else rather than on yourself. We see this again and again when we give people money to spend on other people instead of on themselves. Of course, these are undergraduates in Canada -- not the world's most representative population.
They're also fairly wealthy and affluent and all these other sorts of things. We wanted to see if this holds true everywhere in the world or just among wealthy countries. So we went, in fact, to Uganda and ran a very similar experiment. So imagine, instead of just people in Canada, we said, "Name the last time you spent money on yourself or other people.
Describe it. How happy did it make you?" Or in Uganda, "Name the last time you spent money on yourself or other people and describe that." And then we asked them how happy they are again. And what we see is sort of amazing because there's human universals on what you do with your money and then real cultural differences on what you do as well.
So for example, one guy from Uganda says this. He said, "I called a girl I wished to love." They basically went out on a date, and he says at the end that he didn't "achieve" her up till now. Here's a guy from Canada. Very similar thing. "I took my girlfriend out for dinner. We went to a movie, we left early, and then went back to her room for ... " only cake -- just a piece of cake.
Human universal -- so you spend money on other people, you're being nice to them. Maybe you have something in mind, maybe not. But then we see extraordinary differences. So look at these two. This is a woman from Canada. We say, "Name a time you spent money on somebody else." She says, "I bought a present for my mom.
I drove to the mall in my car, bought a present, gave it to my mom." Perfectly nice thing to do. It's good to get gifts for people that you know. Compare that to this woman from Uganda. "I was walking and met a long-time friend whose son was sick with malaria. They had no money, they went to a clinic and I gave her this money."
This isn't $10,000, it's the local currency. So it's a very small amount of money, in fact. But enormously different motivations here. This is a real medical need, literally a life-saving donation. Above, it's just kind of, I bought a gift for my mother.
What we see again though is that the specific way that you spend on other people isn't nearly as important as the fact that you spend on other people in order to make yourself happy, which is really quite important. So you don't have to do amazing things with your money to make yourself happy.
You can do small, trivial things and yet still get these benefits from doing this. These are only two countries. We also wanted to go even broader and look at every country in the world if we could to see what the relationship is between money and happiness.
We got data from the Gallup Organization, which you know from all the political polls that have been happening lately. They ask people, "Did you donate money to charity recently?" and they ask them, "How happy are you with your life in general?" And we can see what the relationship is between those two things. Are they positively correlated?
Giving money makes you happy. Or are they negatively correlated? On this map, green will mean they're positively correlated and red means they're negatively correlated. And you can see, the world is crazily green. So in almost every country in the world where we have this data, people who give money to charity are happier people that people who don't give money to charity.
I know you're all looking at that red country in the middle. I would be a jerk and not tell you what it is, but in fact, it's Central African Republic. You can make up stories. Maybe it's different there for some reason or another. Just below that to the right is Rwanda though, which is amazingly green. So almost everywhere we look we see that giving money away makes you happier than keeping it for yourself.
What about your work life, which is where we spend all the rest of our time when we're not with the people we know. We decided to infiltrate some companies and do a very similar thing. So these are sales teams in Belgium. They work in teams; they go out and sell to doctors and try to get them to buy drugs.
So we can look and see how well they sell things as a function of being a member of a team. Some teams, we give people on the team some money for themselves and say, "Spend it however you want on yourself," just like we did with the undergrads in Canada. But other teams we say, "Here's 15 euro. Spend it on one of your teammates this week. Buy them something as a gift or a present and give it to them.
And then we can see, well now we've got teams that spend on themselves and we've got these prosocial teams who we give money to make the team a little bit better. The reason I have a ridiculous pinata there is one of the teams pooled their money and bought a pinata, and they all got around and smashed the pinata and all the candy fell out and things like that.
A very silly, trivial thing to do, but think of the difference on a team that didn't do that at all, that got 15 euro, put it in their pocket, maybe bought themselves a coffee, or teams that had this prosocial experience where they all bonded together to buy something and do a group activity.
What we see is that, in fact, the teams that are prosocial sell more stuff than the teams that only got money for themselves. And one way to think about it is for every 15 euro you give people for themselves, they put it in their pocket, they don't do anything different than they did before.
You don't get any money from that. You actually lose money because it doesn't motivate them to perform any better. But when you give them 15 euro to spend on their teammates, they do so much better on their teams that you actually get a huge win on investing this kind of money. And I realize that you're probably thinking to yourselves, this is all fine, but there's a context that's incredibly important for public policy and I can't imagine it would work there.
And basically that if he doesn't show me that it works here, I don't believe anything he said. And I know what you're all thinking about are dodgeball teams. (Laughter) This was a huge criticism that we got to say, if you can't show it with dodgeball teams, this is all stupid. So we went out and found these dodgeball teams and infiltrated them. And we did the exact same thing as before.
So some teams, we give people on the team money, they spend it on themselves. Other teams, we give them money to spend on their dodgeball teammates. The teams that spend money on themselves are just the same winning percentages as they were before. The teams that we give the money to spend on each other, they become different teams and, in fact, they dominate the league by the time they're done.
Across all of these different contexts -- your personal life, you work life, even silly things like intramural sports -- we see spending on other people has a bigger return for you than spending on yourself. And so I'll just say, I think if you think money can't buy happiness you're not spending it right. The implication is not you should buy this product instead of that product and that's the way to make yourself happier. It's in fact, that you should stop thinking about which product to buy for yourself and try giving some of it to other people instead.
And we luckily have an opportunity for you. DonorsChoose.org is a non-profit for mainly public school teachers in low-income schools. They post projects, so they say, "I want to teach Huckleberry Finn to my class and we don't have the books," or "I want a microscope to teach my students science and we don't have a microscope."
You and I can go on and buy it for them. The teacher writes you a thank you note. The kids write you a thank you note. Sometimes they send you pictures of them using the microscope. It's an extraordinary thing. Go to the website and start yourself on the process of thinking, again, less about "How can I spend money on myself?" and more about "If I've got five dollars or 15 dollars, what can I do to benefit other people?" Because ultimately when you do that, you'll find that you'll benefit yourself much more. Thank you. (Applause)
我今天想来谈谈金钱和幸福这两样东西。
我们很多人会花时间和精力尝试着争取更多的（金钱和幸福），我们对此深有体会。
在很多宗教和自我激励的书中，我们常常看到一个观点：“金钱不能带来幸福”，但我今天想告诉你其实恰恰相反（笑声）。
但我今天想告诉你，其时恰恰相反。我来自商学院，这是我们的作风，所以说那个观点是错的。实际上，如果你认真想想，那是因为你花钱花错地方了。
如果你反思下自己花钱的方式，或许你会尝试改变一下，那样做也许会更有效果。
在我告诉你通过花钱来让自己感觉更幸福的方法之前，让我们想想我们通常是怎么花钱的——其实它们并没有让我们感觉更幸福。
我们做了一个小实验：CNN在不久之前发表了一篇有意思的文章，它是关于彩票中奖者的经历的。很多人都以为当他们彩票中奖之后，生活会变得超级好，但这篇文章却是描述了他们的生活是如何被毁掉的。
这些人中奖后到底做了些什么事情呢？第一，他们花光了所有的钱而且又欠下了一屁股债；第二，他们所有的朋友和曾经的熟人，都来找他们要钱，这实际上毁掉了他们的人际关系。所以相比于中奖之前，他们欠下了更多的债，也失去了朋友。
但这篇文章有意思的地方在于，读者们在该文章底部做出的评论。这些人并没有说，为什么这些金钱没有带来幸福，而是马上开始说，“假如是我中奖，我会怎么做……。"并且幻想着他们中奖后的事情。
我从中找出了两个值得大家思考的评论。有位读者写到：”我中奖后，要买座小山，还要在上面建座小房子。“（笑声）
又有一个人写到：“我会把这些钱放到一个大浴缸里面，然后躺进这个浴缸里面抽上一只大雪茄，最后再来上一瓶香槟酒。”接下来更糟糕了，“我要拍张照片，照片中会有很多金光闪闪的东西。任何向我要钱的人，都会得到这个照片，其它东西都免谈。”（笑声）
还有很多评论都是这种类型的。当他们获得金钱后，事实上，他们会变得更加不爱交际。所以我说，这些中奖的人的生活会被毁掉，他们会不断受到朋友的骚扰，并且，金钱通常让我们变得自私,因为我们通常只想做对自己有利的事情。
也许金钱不能使我们变得开心的真正原因,是因为我们并没有正确地使用它。确切地讲，我们花钱总是为了自己。
我一直想知道，将金钱花在别的人身上会发生什么。
与其得到金钱之后变得有反社会倾向，我们何不将这些钱回馈给社会呢？
于是我们试着让别人这样做，看看会发生什么。
所以我们不妨让一部分人按照原来的方式处理这些金钱——把它花到自己的身上，而让另一部分人捐出这些钱。然后我们测一测他们的幸福感，看看到底这样做会不会让他们变得更快乐——这就是我们的第一种实验方式。
在温哥华的早上，我们走在英属哥伦比亚大学的校园里，我们问碰到的一些学生：你们愿意加入我们的实验吗？他们回答：“行啊。”
我们问这些人他们有多幸福，然后给他们每人一个装了钱的信封，其中一个信封里写着： “在今天下午五点之前，把这些钱全部花到自己身上。”我们会给他们一些关于如何花掉这些钱的建议。
另外一些人也会收到这样的信封，里面会写到： “请在今天下午五点之前，把这些钱全部花在别人的身上。”同样信封里装有一些钱，我们事先安排好了信封里的钱数，所以一些人会得到一张纸和5美元，而另一些人会得到一张纸和20美元，我们让这些人自由地安排自己这一天的生活。
这些人的确按照我们的要求花掉了那笔钱，晚上的时候，我们把他们召集起来，问他们：“你用这些钱干了什么，现在你感觉有多幸福？”
那么他们是怎么花掉这笔钱的呢？因为大部分人还在读大学，所以那些被要求把钱花在自己身上的人，都为自己买了耳环和化妆品，其中的一个女生说她为她的侄女买了一个填充动物玩具，也有一些人把这些钱给了流浪汉，还有很多人把钱花在了星巴克。（笑声）
所以如果你给一个大学生5美元，他们很可能用它来买咖啡，他们会在最短的时间内走进星巴克，把这笔钱花掉。有些人会为自己买一杯咖啡，他们平常也是这样做的，但是也有一些人说他们为别人买了咖啡。
所以我们由此可以发现，一样的钱，有人花在了自己的身上，有人花在了别人的身上。
当我们晚上把他们召集起来，我们有什么样的发现呢？我们发现，那些把钱花在别人身上的人，变得更加快乐了。而那些把钱花在自己身上的人，情绪上并没有什么变化，他们并没有变得更加不开心，他们只是没有变得更加开心。
我们的另一个发现是钱的数量在这里并没有起到太大的作用。一些人或许会觉得20美元一定比5美元更加让人感到开心，但是事实上，你花了多少钱并不重要，真正重要的是，你把钱花在了别人的身上，而不是你自己身上。
每次当我们把钱给别人，并要求他们把钱花在他人身上时，我们都会得到相同的结论。
当然了，这些人只是加拿大的大学生，他们并不能代表世界上其他地方的人，他们相对来说还是比较富裕的人群，所以我们想知道这个结论在世界其他地方是不是也同样成立，或者只在富人阶层成立。
所以我们去了乌干达，做了一个相同的实验，大家不妨想象一下，这些人不是加拿大人。
在加拿大，我们曾问到：你最近一次为你自己或别人花钱是什么时候？试着描述一下，你当时感觉到多少幸福呢？
在乌干达，我们问了同样的问题：你最近一次为自己或别人花钱是什么时候？试着描述一下当时的感受。然后我们问他们自己感觉到多少的幸福。
我们发现了一些惊人的结论——因为人们在花钱时都会受到人类共性的影响，同时也会受到文化差异的影响。比如说，一个乌干达人曾这样说，他说：“我打电话给我暗恋的一个女孩。”然后他们一块出去约会，然后他又说自己直到现在也没有赢得她的“芳心”。
还有一个加拿大人，他有着非常类似的经历，他说: "我把我的女朋友叫出去一起吃晚饭，我们一起看了电影，然后早早地就离开了电影院。我们一起回到她家里，一起……呵呵，只是一起吃蛋糕。”
这就是人类的共性--你把钱花在别人身上，你就会对他们很好。
也许现在你已经意识到了一些东西，也许你还没有。但是我们确实发现了花钱方式带来的一些明显的差别。
再来看看这两个例子：有一位来自加拿大的女性，我们让她说说她最近一次为别人花钱的场景，她说：“我为我母亲买了一件礼物。我开车去了商场，买了一件礼物，把它送给了我妈妈。”她做得很棒，为你认识的人买礼物是件很不错的事情。
我们现在再把这个例子同那个乌干达女性的例子做个比较，她说：“我当时正在路上，然后遇到了我的一个好友。她的儿子得了疟疾。他们没有钱治病，当他们去诊所看病的时候我把这笔钱给了他们。”那不是10，000美元，只是一点当地货币，所以事实上那是一笔很少的钱。但是在这里它却有了不一样的意义和价值，这是一个真正的医疗需求，就像一笔救命的捐款一样。
而上面加拿大女性的例子里，她只是给自己的妈妈买了一份礼物。所以我们会发现，你用什么样的方式去把这些钱花到别人身上并不重要，真正重要的是，你通过这样一种方式使自己变得快乐。
所以你不一定非得花钱做一些特殊的事情才能获得快乐，你可以只是通过做一些微不足道的小事儿来获取快乐。
当然了上面的例子仅仅涉及到了两个国家，我们想走得更远，看看世界上每一个国家的情况。我们想知道在这些国家中金钱和幸福的关系。
我们从盖洛普公司得到了一些数据，如果你接受过政治上的民意调查，那么你一定对它不会陌生。他们会问被调查者：“你最近向慈善机构捐过钱吗？”然后他们会接着问：“你平常的生活有多幸福呢？”然后我们会发现幸福和金钱的关系。
它们是正相关的吗？
捐钱会使你变得幸福吗？
还是说它们是负相关的呢？
在这张地图上，绿色代表正相关，红色代表负相关。
然后你会发现，整个世界几乎都是绿色的。
所以在几乎每一个我们获取到数据的国家里，那些把钱捐到慈善机构的人，比那些没有这么做的人会更加的幸福。
我知道你们现在正在盯着这个位于中间位置的那个红色的国家，如果不告诉你们是什么国家，你们会骂我的，好吧，实际上它是中非共和国。
你可以自己想象一下，也许那里有其它的一些原因，它右下方的国家是卢旺达，你可以看到那里居然全是绿色。所以几乎在我们调查过的每一个地方，我们都可以看到捐出钱会使你变得更加幸福，而不是你仅仅把钱留给自己。
那么对于你的工作来说呢？除了与自己熟悉的人在一起，我们会把几乎所有的剩余时间花在工作上。我们决定走进一些公司，然后做相同的调查。
我们研究了一群来自比利时的销售团队，他们以小组为单位工作，他们会对医生进行推销，试着说服那些医生购买他们的药品。所以我们可以观察到作为团队的一员，他们的销售业绩是如何的。
在一些团队中，我们把钱给这些人，然后告诉他们：“用这些钱去买自己想要的东西吧。”就像当初我们对加拿大的大学生说的一样。但是在另外一些团队中，我们会告诉他们：“这里有15欧元，在这一周内把钱花到你其中的一个队友身上吧，为他们买件礼物然后送给他们。”
现在我们有两组不同的团队：一个把钱花在自己身上，另一个则是有利他行为的团队，我们把钱给了这个团队使他们做得更好。
其中的一个团队把钱凑到一起然后买了一个皮纳塔(装满糖果的玩具)。他们聚到一起，把它打碎然后里面所有的糖果就掉出来了，这看起来是一个很傻，很微不足道的事情。但是想想这与那些没有这样做的团队的区别：那些团队里的人得到了15欧元，然后放进了自己的腰包，他们或许会为自己买上一杯咖啡。而另一些团队会变得有利他性：他们会把钱放到一起，然后买一些东西，做一些集体活动。
我们这时会发现，那些更有利他主义倾向的团队的销售业绩比那些只把钱花在自己身上的团队更好。
我们不妨分析一下：你把15欧元给了他们，然后他们把钱装进了腰包，他们并没有做任何不同于以前的事情。你并没有从这项投资中得到任何的收益，你实际上亏了钱，因为你给的那些钱并没有激励他们去做得更好。
但是当你给他们15欧元并让他们把钱花在别人身上时，他们往往做得更好，你通过这少量的投资会得到丰厚的回报。
我猜你们大家此时会在心里对自己说：“这是一个好主意。”
但是对于这样的公共政策，一个适宜的外部环境是非常重要的。对于某一种活动，我不敢想象刚才的那个方法会奏效，如果我无法亲眼看到这种办法真的奏效的话，我基本上是不会相信的。
我知道你们现在想到的是躲避球运动（笑声），你们会想，如果你不能证明那种方法在躲避球团队也同样奏效的话，那么这个例子就是一个很好的反例，你的那个结论就会很愚蠢。
所以我们同样找到了一些躲避球队，走进他们，然后我们做了相同的调查。
在一些团队中，我们把钱给他们，让他们把钱花在自己身上。而另一些团队，我们给他们钱，让他们把钱花在团队身上。
把钱花在个人身上的团队，他们的胜率和以前一样。但是把钱花在其他队员的团队，他们有了改变，最后他们成了联赛的赢家。
在所有这些不同的情境当中，无论是你的个人生活，还是你的工作，甚至是那些看起来很傻的体育运动，我们都可以发现，把钱花在别人身上往往会比那些把钱花在自己身上可以得到更多的回报。
所以我觉得如果你认为钱不能买来幸福，那么你一定是没有学会如何花钱。
我意思是，这不是一个钱的问题，这是一个如何使你自己变得更加幸福的问题。事实上，你不应该再想给自己买什么东西，而是应该尝试着给点钱给需要帮助的人。
幸运的是我们恰好为大家准备了这样的一个机会，这里有一家“捐助者的选择”的网站（donorschoose.org），它是一个非盈利机构，它的目标对象是那些学校里的低收入老师。他们会发布一些捐助项目，比如有的老师会说：“我想在课堂上讲费恩历险记，但是我们没有相关的书籍。”或者是：“我需要一个显微镜来讲授自然科学，是我们现在没有显微镜。”
这时我们就可以花钱为他们买来这些东西，这些老师和学生都会给你写感谢信。有时也会给你寄来他们在课堂上使用显微镜的照片，这是一件很令人开心的事情。
现在大家就可以登陆这个网站，开始自己的捐助旅程。
或者你至少可以少想一想 “我可以为自己买些什么”这样的问题。
多想想：如果我今天得到了5美元或15美元，我怎么才能用他们来帮助别人呢？因为最后你会发现，其实当你做这些事情的时候，最大的获益人是你自己，谢谢！（鼓掌声）