美国国家公共电台 NPR Need A Happiness Boost? Spend Your Money To Buy Time, Not More Stuff

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Have you ever heard the phrase, money can't buy happiness? Of course you have. Well, some researchers beg to differ. A new study shows that if you spend your money to buy more time rather than stuff, you really can be a bit happier. NPR's Allison Aubrey has this report.

ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE¹: This time of year, it's easy to feel pulled in multiple directions. With the back to school season, we struggle to manage the demands of home and work. Newly married Mark and Colleen Correal told me that sometimes it feels like there just aren't enough hours in the day. He works in IT. She's a lawyer.

COLLEEN CORREAL: I work probably 60-plus hours a week. I can't believe how busy I am, a lot more than I ever expected.

AUBREY: Last year, they bought a house, which they love. But Colleen says cleaning it is a real pain, and Mark says now every weekend, he's got to mow² the lawn.

MARK CORREAL: It's just some days I'd just rather not.

AUBREY: The Correals say they'd love more free time. They'd rather spend Saturday afternoons at a ballgame or a concert or just hanging out here.

M. CORREAL: I'd rather have wine with my wife. It's a much more enjoyable experience than sweating and being annoyed with my used lawnmower.

AUBREY: But so far, the Correals say they have not considered hiring a lawn service or a cleaning service.

M. CORREAL: I don't know. I like doing stuff myself. There's, like, a point of pride in that.

C. CORREAL: I truly think it's an American work ethic³ thing.

M. CORREAL: I think we were both raised very blue collar, so we'd rather do stuff ourselves than pay for someone else to do it.

AUBREY: Sound familiar? Researchers who study people's daily habits and decisions say they hear this all the time. Elizabeth Dunn is a professor of psychology⁴ at the University of British Columbia.

ELIZABETH DUNN: Contemplating⁵ paying somebody else to do something you are perfectly⁶ capable of doing yourself may provoke these feelings of guilt⁷.

AUBREY: Even though we live in a culture where many people don't bat an eye at spending money on a new car or a fancy pair of shoes, Dunn and her colleagues had a hunch⁸ that if people spent a little less on things and a little more on help with tasks like cleaning or yard work, they might feel more satisfied with their quality of life.

DUNN: We hypothesized that people would be happier if they spent money to buy themselves out of the things they don't like doing.

AUBREY: To test this theory, Dunn and her colleagues decided⁹ to do a study in two parts. For the first part, they recruited a bunch of working adults, gave them some cash and asked them to spend it in two different ways.

DUNN: On one weekend, we gave them $40 and asked them to spend it in any way that would give them more free time.

AUBREY: Some people did spend it on a cleaning service. Others had groceries delivered or hired someone to run errands. Then, on the next weekend, the participants got another $40, this time to spend on a material purchase, things like a piece of jewelry¹⁰ or clothing.

DUNN: One person bought polo shirts. Another person bought wine that she described as fancy.

AUBREY: After each weekend purchase, Dunn and her colleagues asked the participants how they were feeling.

DUNN: How much positive emotion they'd been experiencing, how much negative emotion they'd been experiencing as well as rating their levels of time stress.

AUBREY: And what they found is that when people spent money on timesaving services, they reported more positive emotion.

DUNN: Buying yourself out of an unpleasant experience, like mowing¹¹ the lawn or cleaning the bathroom - these were pretty small, mundane¹² expenditures¹³. And yet, we see them making a measurable difference for people's happiness.

AUBREY: So how much happier are we talking about here? To figure this out, Dunn and her colleagues did the second part of the study. They surveyed about 6,000 people in the U.S., Canada and Europe across the income spectrum¹⁴. Many were working-age adults with children.

DUNN: The question we asked is this, do you spend money to outsource any tasks that you dislike doing?

AUBREY: And they also asked the participants to rank themselves on a 10-point scale of life satisfaction. Think of it as a happiness ladder with 10 rungs.

DUNN: What we found was that people who spent money to buy time reported being almost 1 full point higher on our 10-point ladder compared to people who did not use money to buy time.

AUBREY: And this held true across all income levels, from people of average means to millionaires. So this raises an interesting question - why are so many of us reluctant to do something that evidence shows can make us feel more satisfied with our lives?

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

That is NPR's Allison Aubrey. She is in our studios with us.

AUBREY: Hi there, David.

GREENE: I don't want to be a killjoy, but I have some questions.

AUBREY: Yeah, sure.

GREENE: One point on the happiness ladder - is this that big a deal?

AUBREY: Right. You know, hiring a cleaning service won't make a miserable¹⁵ person suddenly blissfully happy. But the researchers who study this stuff say that it is incredibly hard to nudge people at all. You know, many of us have a set point. We all know people who are happy-go-lucky. Then there are people who are a little more gloomy; I like to think of them as the Eeyores of the world.

(LAUGHTER)

AUBREY: So you know, I think if something as simple as a $40 purchase has this ability to move the needle, albeit¹⁶ just one wrung¹⁷ temporarily, the researchers say that's an achievement. And that's why I think these findings are being published in a top-tier journal, the Proceedings¹⁸ of the National Academy of Sciences.

GREENE: OK. So you spend, say, $40 to buy a little more time. What are people doing with that extra time? Because I imagine happiness has to do with what you actually end up spending the time doing.

AUBREY: You know, the study doesn't answer the question directly. But I should point out that the people in the study were really busy. They had jobs and kids. To me, it makes sense that having a cleaning service might relieve a little bit of the stress.

GREENE: Yeah. And relieving the stress itself makes you happier, regardless of what you end up doing. NPR's Allison Aubrey. Thanks as always. We appreciate it.

AUBREY: Thanks, David.

(SOUNDBITE OF EFTERKLANG SONG, "DREAMS TODAY")

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 mow   

v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆

参考例句：

• He hired a man to mow the lawn.他雇人割草。
• We shall have to mow down the tall grass in the big field.我们得把大田里的高草割掉。

3 ethic   

n.道德标准，行为准则

参考例句：

• They instilled the work ethic into their children.他们在孩子们的心中注入了职业道德的理念。
• The connotation of education ethic is rooted in human nature's mobility.教育伦理的内涵根源于人本性的变动性。

4 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

5 contemplating   

深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的现在分词 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想

参考例句：

• You're too young to be contemplating retirement. 你考虑退休还太年轻。
• She stood contemplating the painting. 她站在那儿凝视那幅图画。

6 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

7 guilt   

n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责

参考例句：

• She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
• Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。

8 hunch   

n.预感，直觉

参考例句：

• I have a hunch that he didn't really want to go.我有这么一种感觉，他并不真正想去。
• I had a hunch that Susan and I would work well together.我有预感和苏珊共事会很融洽。

9 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

10 jewelry   

n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝

参考例句：

• The burglars walked off with all my jewelry.夜盗偷走了我的全部珠宝。
• Jewelry and lace are mostly feminine belongings.珠宝和花边多数是女性用品。

11 mowing   

n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The lawn needs mowing. 这草坪的草该割了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• "Do you use it for mowing?" “你是用它割草么？” 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

12 mundane   

adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的

参考例句：

• I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作，而不是一份平凡无奇的。
• I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的，即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。

13 expenditures   

n.花费( expenditure的名词复数 )；使用；（尤指金钱的）支出额；（精力、时间、材料等的）耗费

参考例句：

• We have overspent.We'll have to let up our expenditures next month. 我们已经超支了，下个月一定得节约开支。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The pension includes an allowance of fifty pounds for traffic expenditures. 年金中包括50镑交通费补贴。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

15 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

16 albeit   

conj.即使；纵使；虽然

参考例句：

• Albeit fictional,she seemed to have resolved the problem.虽然是虚构的，但是在她看来好象是解决了问题。
• Albeit he has failed twice,he is not discouraged.虽然失败了两次，但他并没有气馁。

17 wrung   

绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水）

参考例句：

• He has wrung the words from their true meaning. 他曲解这些字的真正意义。
• He wrung my hand warmly. 他热情地紧握我的手。

18 proceedings   

n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报

参考例句：

• He was released on bail pending committal proceedings. 他交保获释正在候审。
• to initiate legal proceedings against sb 对某人提起诉讼