During the holy month of Ramadan, our desire to help others increases, whether through material or in-kind assistance. This giving is a religious and spiritual value and has a great eschatological reward, but surprisingly, it is also able to bring many psychological benefits to the giver.

This is confirmed by Adam Grant, an American lecturer and psychologist who has been researching human behavior for many years and discovered many interesting aspects of human interactions. In his 2013 book GIVE & TAKE, Grant spoke of three personalities in the giving system: the giver, the awaiter, and the taker.

According to Grant, the biggest winner in this equation is the giver, the individual who enjoys giving, whether his giving is in the form of money or otherwise, the one who gives without caring whether he will get anything in return or not, and in this he is the opposite of the expectant, who expects and waits for his giving and calculates what he has given and what he will receive. The donor, whom Grant saw as the biggest winner, doesn't want anything but to know that someone will be better off because of what they've done. (1)

A giving brain

Researchers coined the term "identifiable victim effect," which refers to people's tendency to give preference to specific victims over unknowns. (Shutterstock)

In a study published in 2013, researchers led by Alexander Genevsky, a graduate student in psychology at Stanford University, imaging the brains of 22 young people. Respondents were shown either a silhouette (without features) identified as an orphan and refugee in the Darfur region of Sudan, or a shot of the face of a young African child (clearly featured). Before showing this image, each respondent was given $15 to participate in the experiment, and told the respondents that they could keep this money or donate it to a partnership the researchers had set up with a Sudanese orphanage. Each photo was submitted with a specific donation request, ranging from $1-12. (2)

The results showed that participants were more likely to donate if they saw a face rather than a blank silhouette, and even donated nearly twice the amount asked of them in photo experiments. The researchers found that the decision to give or donate was strongly related to the respondents' feelings, as they showed little activity in their "accumbens septi nucleus", a brain area responsible for rewards in the human brain, and is active when a person is exposed to pleasant experiences.

The researchers coined the term "identifiable victim effect", a term that refers to people's tendency to give preference to specific victims versus unknowns, people are willing to spend more resources to save the lives of specific victims compared to rescuing unidentified victims, and this is evident in wide ranges, for example, people will tend to empathize with the problem of one citizen who tells his story from a country with wars, but when battle statistics and the number of deaths are announced, no one sympathizes, people need a face and a story. (3) Even in advertising, it depends in part on this effect when soliciting charitable donations from people.

Fundamental scientific evidence suggests that what makes people consistently happy is a positive focus on others. (Pixaby)

But an important note, during Genevsky's previous experiment, people's increased giving when seeing photographs versus silhouettes was caused by the positive feelings of excitement generated by photography, not negative arousal. In other words, excitement, not guilt, were the feelings felt by the person giving a small amount to another person. In another study that examined more than 13000,4 real-world microloan applications, whether successful and approved or unsuccessful, from microcredit company Kiva, scientists found after neuroimaging of the study participants' brains that positive emotions, such as arousal, rather than negative emotions, such as guilt, drive lending decisions. This was also explained by the observation of the activity of the nucleus accumbens. (5) (<>)

When it comes to the pursuit of happiness, popular culture encourages one to focus on oneself. But by contrast, substantial scientific evidence suggests that what makes people consistently happy is a positive focus on others. A study published in 2016 compared mood-enhancing effects of positive social behavior on the one hand and self-directed behavior on the other, in a 6-week experiment, conducted on a diverse sample of 473 participants, the researchers found that positive social behavior led to a greater increase in psychological prosperity compared to self-centeredness. People who were hired to engage in self-centered behavior did not report improved psychological prosperity or positive emotions. (6)

The results showed that those who spent part of their rewards on others scored a higher level of happiness than those who spent it on themselves. (Shutterstock)

In another study, conducted by Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton in 2008 and colleagues, researchers found that giving money to someone else was able to increase participants' happiness more than spending that money on themselves, even though participants expected that spending on themselves would make them happier. Norton says: "The study addressed the paradox that economists have talked about for a long time: that increases in income do not lead to a significant increase in happiness. "People are buying bigger and bigger houses, but they don't seem to be happier as a result."

For the study, researchers asked 632 American men and women how much they earned each year — how much they spent each month on bills, expenses and gifts for themselves; what they spent monthly on gifts to others and donations to charity; and asked them to rate their happiness. The results showed that those who reported spending more on others, what the research team called "positive" spending, had a higher level of happiness, while the amount they spent on themselves had no effect on how much happiness.

Another test tracked how 16 employees spent a profit-sharing bonus at a Boston-based company. A month before receiving the bonus, which averaged about $5000,3000, employees were asked to rate their happiness level. Then, after receiving the reward, they were asked again about their level of happiness, as well as a series of questions about how they spent money. The results showed that those who spent part of their rewards on others scored a higher level of happiness than those who spent them on themselves, while the actual amount of the reward had no effect on a person's happiness. "The amount in dollars didn't have any effect on happiness over time, people were equally happy whether they received $8000,7 or $<>,<>," says Norton. All the difference in happiness came from the percentage the employee spent on other people." (<>)

The magic of volunteering

The results showed that volunteers for charity and third party service had a 63% lower mortality rate than non-volunteers. (Shutterstock)

Well, giving isn't just about giving money, volunteering is perhaps one of the most attractive forms of giving. (8) A study of older California populations attempted to investigate the link between voluntary service to others and all-cause mortality (in an attempt to understand the relationship between volunteering and health status). Possible overlapping factors, such as demographics, health status, physical performance, health habits, social support, religious status, and emotional state, were studied. The results showed that volunteers for charity and third party service had a 63% lower mortality rate than non-volunteers. The study explained this relationship between volunteering and reduced mortality as mostly due to physical performance, healthy habits and social support, which a volunteer can get just by volunteering. (9)

Research on the health-related benefits of giving and volunteering is thought to have begun in 1980, with a study comparing volunteers and non-volunteers aged 65 or over. Researchers Kathleen Hunter and Margaret Lane, from the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Miami, found that volunteers had a significantly higher rate of life satisfaction and desire to live, and had fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Ten years after the previous research, Elizabeth Midlarski, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University's Teachers College who has studied the act of altruism and giving for many years, suggested some reasons that might explain why altruistic behavior might benefit older adults.

Good people

In her book "Why Good Things Happen to Good People?" Stephen Post reports that giving has been shown to increase health benefits for people with chronic diseases. (Social Media)

In a similar vein, researcher Neil Krause and colleagues at the University of Michigan's Institute of Gerontology released a study on aging in 1999, examining the relationship between religion, giving, and health. In a sample of nearly 2000,10 elderly people in Japan, researchers found that those who offered more help to others had a chance of better physical health. (<>)

In her book "Why Good Things Happen to Good People?" Stephen Post, a professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook University, reports that giving has been shown to increase health benefits for people with chronic diseases, including HIV and multiple sclerosis. The book also included a reference to a fifty-year study, which showed that people who start learning the importance of giving to others and doing it during their high school years have better physical and mental health throughout their lives. (11)

Researchers suggest that one of the reasons giving can improve physical health is that it helps reduce stress, which in turn is linked to a variety of health problems. In a 2006 study by Rachel Bevery of Johns Hopkins University and Kathleen Lawler of the University of Tennessee, people who provided social support to others had lower blood pressure than participants who did not, suggesting a direct physiological benefit to those who provided assistance to others. Correlational analyses conducted during the same previous study revealed that participants with a higher propensity for social support reported feeling greater social support, a higher sense of self-efficacy, greater self-esteem, less depression, and less stress than participants with a lower tendency to provide social support to others. (12)

In investigating the ability of giving to bring mental health benefits, another study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior in 2005 attempted to gain more accurate knowledge about the relationship between volunteering and depression. The study sought to answer some questions, including: Does volunteering reduce depressive symptoms among older adults? Does depression affect the volunteering of seniors? The results of the study revealed a beneficial effect of formal volunteering in the treatment of depression. The same study also demonstrated that depression was associated with a subsequent increase in volunteering rates, suggesting volunteering as a means of "compensating" and an attempt to overcome depression. (13)

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Sources:

  • 1- Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
  • 2- Neural Underpinnings of the Identifiable Victim Effect: Affect Shifts Preferences for Giving
  • 3- Explaining the “Identifiable Victim Effect”
  • 4- A smile boosts the chances of getting a microloan, say Stanford psychologists
  • 5- The Selfish Reasons Behind Why We Give
  • 6- Do unto others or treat yourself? The effects of prosocial and self-focused behavior on psychological flourishing.
  • 7- Money spent on others can buy happiness
  • 8- Altruism and Indirect Reciprocity: The Interaction of Person and Situation in Prosocial Behavior
  • 9- Volunteerism and Mortality among the Community-dwelling Elderly
  • 10- Studies on love and kindness get better with age
  • 11- Why Good Things Happen to Good People
  • 12- Social support and ambulatory blood pressure: an examination of both receiving and giving
  • 13- Volunteering and Depression in Later Life: Social Benefit or Selection Processes?