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Although money is central to people's lives, the impact of people's attitudes to money on their well-being has rarely been studied. The present study explored the effect of giving away money on an individual's life satisfaction, self-esteem and money-related attitudes (anxiety, distrust, power-prestige and retention time). An innovative intervention was designed in which participants were invited to either give away money (the experimental condition) or spend money on themselves as usual (the control condition) for three days. The impact of the intervention was assessed using a mixed methods design, comprising pre- and post- quantitative self-report scales (life satisfaction, self-esteem and money-related attitudes) together with qualitative diary reports (analysed using grounded theory). As hypothesized, participation in the intervention led to significant increases in wellbeing in the experimental group, including improvements in life satisfaction and self-esteem. In addition, while the control group experienced higher post-test levels of money-related anxiety, the experimental group suffered no such increases. The results provide corroboration for the powerful idea that charity does not only benefit the recipient, butpositively impacts upon the donor too.
Keywords: Giving away money, spending money, life satisfaction, self-esteem, attitude towards money,
The emergent field of positive psychology is focused around promoting the optimal functioning of the individual and organizations (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). However, although a wide variety of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) have been designed and implemented to enhance well-being in all aspects of life, very few interventions have been designed relating to finance or money. Money has been a neglected topic withinpsychology generally (Fumham & Argyle, 1998), despite the fact that money is deeply connected to the overall well-being of people (Diener & Seligman, 2004). The indispensable importance of money in human life is well-known, as is the value of charitable giving, which is has been anintegral part of human culture over the centuries (Mauss, 1954).Charitable giving has a long history stretching back to Roman, Greek and Egypt civilizations (Clydesdale, 1990; Myer, 1993), and has been widely practiced in most religions, including Christianity (Carson, 1991; Nightangle, 1973), Judaism (Carson, 1991; Nightangle, 1973), Hinduism (Bhaskarananda, 2002), Islam (Hilali, 1998) and Jainism (Shryasha,l 998), where tithing to poor people has been associated with good morale and the sanctity of an individual's character (Fumham, 1995; Fumham, 1996). Although...