Abstract
Past research reliably shows that spending money on others (termed prosocial spending) makes people happier than spending money on oneself. The present research tested whether the happiness benefits of prosocial spending may be reduced when spending money on others for self-centered reasons—to benefit the self—than when done for recipient-centered reasons—to benefit the recipient. Four specific spending motives—spending on others to self-enhance, out of obligation, to enhance recipients, and to support recipients—were derived empirically and tested for their unique effects on hedonic and eudaemonic well-being. Across four studies, recipient-enhancement, a recipient-centered motive with a positive effect on well-being, and obligation, a self-centered motive with a negative effect on well-being, emerged as the most reliable motivational predictors of well-being from prosocial spending, across hedonic and eudaemonic forms. These findings offer the first evidence of specific interpersonal motives on prosocial spending behaviors and their effects on levels of rewards in addition to kinds of rewards.
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Notes
Defining eudaemonic well-being as a subjectively experienced outcome differs from an important perspective in the literature, in which eudaemonia is focused on the “life well-lived rather than a subjective state” (Martela & Sheldon, 2019, p. 465). According to this perspective, eudaemonia is a way of functioning and not a quality of life; whether eudaemonic activities leads to qualitatively distinct experiences of reward is a separate issue. For reviews of this ongoing controversy, see Huta and Waterman (2014), Kashdan et al. (2008), Martela and Sheldon (2019), Ryan and Martela (2016), and Tiberius (2016).
In all iterations of PCA reported here, results obtained from varimax rotations were compared to those obtained from oblimin and promax rotations. At no point did the choice of rotation change the substantive conclusions being made about which subsets of factors accounted for meaningful variance, even if the patterns of loadings varied.
The factor appeared to measure reciprocity concerns, with items: “It was my turn to pay,” “I knew that _____ would be more likely to help me in the future,” and “I knew that he or she would also help me at some other time”.
The final 4-factor solution also emerged as the best-fitting solution when the analysis was re-run comparing subjects from the participant pool versus subjects from online research sites, and when the analysis was re-run comparing random sub-groups within the sample.
A fourth goal of Study 2 was to examine construct validity of the 23-item scale, by analyzing patterns of concurrent correlations between the motives measure and theoretically neighboring constructs. These procedures were central to scale development but not to predicting well-being and are therefore reported fully in OSM.
There was a significant effect of gender on happiness-from-spending in Step 1 (in which only the covariates were entered), B = 0.29, SE = 0.13, β = 0.13, F(1, 281) = 4.97, p = 0.027, r2partial = 0.02, suggesting that, on average, females (coded 1) reported higher levels of happiness-from-spending than males (coded 0). But this effect disappeared after accounting for the motives in Step 2, F(1, 277) = 0.78, p = 0.379, and therefore will not be discussed further. There were no other significant effects of any of the other covariates in this analysis.
The composite measure of global well-being was not assessed in this study because it measures well-being at a global, trait level, and the focus of this study was on identifying within-person variability, in specific response to spending behaviors.
Coded benefits were also used to re-classify participants into observer-coded conditions, depending on whether stated benefits appeared to match randomly assigned conditions or not. Substituting observer-coded conditions for assigned conditions did not change any of the conclusions drawn from any analysis. Nevertheless, there is value in reporting these analyses. A full report is included in OSM.
Effects of covariates are summarized in OSM.
This metric is comparable to Cohen’s f2 and is suitable for data structured in hierarchical models (Woltman et al., 2012). Total variance accounted for by a model is calculated as (vartotal − varmodel)/vartotal in which vartotal is derived from an unconditional model on the outcome variable. Variance accounted for by predictor variables is calculated as (varmodel − varmodel without variable)/varmodel.
Despite differences in study designs, the effect sizes entered into meta-analysis satisfied the criteria of Morris and DeShon (2002) for combining effect sizes from between-subjects and within-subjects studies, which is that the effect sizes being combined must (1) estimate the same effects (in this case, partial correlations between the motives and well-being) and (2) be transformed into a common metric (in this case, Pearson’s r; see Table S10 in OSM).
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Abigail Lalone and Jenna H. for assistance with coding data. We thank Cheryl Carmichael, Shannon Smith, Michael Maniaci, David de Jong, Stephanie O’Keefe, and James Masciale for providing feedback on early ideas, and Miron Zuckerman and Kathi Heffner for providing feedback on later ideas.
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All procedures performed in these studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the local institutional review board and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The research was approved by the local Research Subjects Review Board at the second author’s university (#34139, #39068, #37412) and by the local Institutional Review Board at the first author’s university (#2014-2768-F).
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Caprariello, P.A., Reis, H.T. “This one’s on me!”: Differential well-being effects of self-centered and recipient-centered motives for spending money on others. Motiv Emot 45, 705–727 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-021-09907-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-021-09907-0