World Happiness Report 2023 113 Kenya, the United Kingdom, and the United States to take part in a “Mystery Experiment.” Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a cash condition, in which they received a $10,000 cash transfer that they were instructed to spend within three months, or a control condition, in which participants did not receive a cash transfer. Results demonstrated that the recipients of the cash transfer from anonymous donors reported greater subjective well-being (including greater life satisfaction and positive affect and lower negative affect) after receiving and spending these funds, with greater effects observed for recipients living in lower-income countries. Other forms of altruism, such as offering to help someone who is lost or providing support for someone in distress, are aimed at improving subjective well-being. In general, people who receive such forms of help report subjective well-being benefits afterward, including greater well-being and self-esteem.22 Recipients of help also report that receiving help improved their trust in social relationships, empathy for others, and optimism about human nature.23 This may be because altruistic acts like these promote social affiliation, which could stem from feelings of gratitude experienced by beneficiaries24 but could also result from feelings of guilt or indebtedness.25 Interestingly, altruistic actors seem to underestimate the positive effects of helping on beneficiaries’ well-being.26 In one recent study, people who were instructed to perform a “random act of kindness” consistently underestimated how much the act would be valued by recipients and how much it would improve their well-being.27 A number of factors affect the degree to which (or whether) helping improves the well-being of the beneficiary, however. One is the relationship between the altruistic actor and the beneficiary. Most acts of altruism are performed by close others, including family members and close friends of the beneficiary.28 This is unsurprising in light of established biological models of altruism, such as kin selection, which promotes preferentially helping genetic relatives, thereby improving the altruist’s own evolutionary fitness. Kin-selected altruism is an evolutionarily selected bias across many species, including humans,29 and can help account for the fact that the vast majority of altruism, including donations of money, time, blood, and organs, is performed to benefit family members.30 Help provided to distant versus close others tends to take different forms, with help for strangers tending to be relatively spontaneous.31 Such help occurs more often in response to immediate distress or need and is thus more unambiguously altruistic than helping close friends or family, which is more often planned and may more often reflect reciprocity or equity-related motives. People may thus view help from family as relatively more obligatory,32 which may affect well-being to the extent people report lower life satisfaction and more negative affect when they do not receive the support they had expected to receive.33 Although helping relationships are inherently unequal, greater asymmetry between the altruist and beneficiary may also reduce the degree to which help improves well-being. When an altruist has a higher status than the beneficiary (for example, higher socioeconomic status), the beneficiary may experience more negative emotions related to feeling pitied or dependent.34 This suggests a potential benefit of anonymous Recipients of help also report that receiving help improved their trust in social relationships, empathy for others, and optimism about human nature. Altruism’s effects on beneficiaries’ well-being (e.g., positive affect, vitality, and self-esteem) seem to be especially robust when the beneficiary believes that the altruist personally chose to help and was intrinsically motivated to do so.
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