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Is Spending Money on Others Good for Your Heart?

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Ashley V. Whillans
Ashley V. Whillans
Ashley V. Whillans
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Elizabeth Dunn at University of British Columbia
Elizabeth Dunn
Gillian Sandstrom at University of Sussex
Gillian Sandstrom
Sally S. Dickerson
Sally S. Dickerson
Sally S. Dickerson
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Abstract

Objective: Does spending money on others (prosocial spending) improve the cardiovascular health of community-dwelling older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure? Method: In Study 1, 186 older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure participating in the Midlife in the U.S. Study (MIDUS) were examined. In Study 2, 73 older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure were assigned to spend money on others or to spend money on themselves. Results: In Study 1, the more money people spent on others, the lower their blood pressure was 2 years later. In Study 2, participants who were assigned to spend money on others for 3 consecutive weeks subsequently exhibited lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to participants assigned to spend money on themselves. The magnitude of these effects was comparable to the effects of interventions such as antihypertensive medication or exercise. Conclusions: Together, these findings suggest that spending money on others shapes cardiovascular health, thereby providing a pathway by which prosocial behavior improves physical health among at-risk older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record
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Is Spending Money on Others Good for Your Heart?
Ashley V. Whillans, Elizabeth W. Dunn,
and Gillian M. Sandstrom
University of British Columbia
Sally S. Dickerson
University of California, Irvine
Kenneth M. Madden
University of British Columbia
Objective: Does spending money on others (prosocial spending) improve the cardiovascular health of
community-dwelling older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure? Method: In Study 1, 186 older
adults diagnosed with high blood pressure participating in the Midlife in the U.S. Study (MIDUS) were
examined. In Study 2, 73 older adults diagnosed with high blood pressure were assigned to spend money
on others or to spend money on themselves. Results: In Study 1, the more money people spent on others,
the lower their blood pressure was 2 years later. In Study 2, participants who were assigned to spend
money on others for 3 consecutive weeks subsequently exhibited lower systolic and diastolic blood
pressure compared to participants assigned to spend money on themselves. The magnitude of these
effects was comparable to the effects of interventions such as antihypertensive medication or exercise.
Conclusions: Together, these findings suggest that spending money on others shapes cardiovascular
health, thereby providing a pathway by which prosocial behavior improves physical health among at-risk
older adults.
Keywords: health, life experiences, prosocial behavior, social behavior, well being
Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0000332.supp
Can spending money on others improve physical health? Recent
research suggests that spending money on others improves emo-
tional well-being (e.g., Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008; see Dunn,
Aknin, & Norton, 2014 for a review). Indeed, the happiness
benefits of spending on others (“prosocial spending”) have been
documented in rich and poor countries around the world, from
Canada and the United States to Uganda and India (Aknin,
Barrington-Leigh, et al., 2013). There has been less research
examining whether prosocial spending can affect physical health.
There is some evidence that generous or stingy economic decisions
may have downstream consequences for cortisol, a hormone that is
implicated in the stress response (Dunn, Ashton-James, Hanson, &
Aknin, 2010). However, research in this area has not yet explored
whether prosocial spending leads to clinically relevant health
benefits. Given that heart disease is the leading cause of death
worldwide, and that high blood pressure puts people at a higher
risk of a heart attack, this article focused on examining whether
prosocial spending reduces blood pressure among at-risk older
adults.
Providing indirect support for this hypothesis, correlational and
longitudinal research suggests that individuals who provide help to
others exhibit a reduced risk of mortality and better overall health
(e.g., Brown, Consedine, & Magai, 2005;Brown et al., 2009;
Piliavin & Siegl, 2007;Poulin, Brown, Dillard, & Smith, 2013; see
Konrath & Brown, 2013 for a recent review). Helping others can
take multiple forms, such as providing informal support to friends
and family and participating in formal volunteer work (Tilly &
Tilly, 1992;Wilson & Musick, 1997). In a ground breaking lon-
gitudinal study, researchers found that providing social support
was associated with a decreased risk of mortality among older
adults (Brown, Nesse, Vinokur, & Smith, 2003). Similarly, people
who volunteered at least four hours per week were less likely to
develop high blood pressure four years later (Sneed & Cohen,
This article was published Online First February 11, 2016.
Ashley V. Whillans, Elizabeth W. Dunn, and Gillian M. Sandstrom,
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia; Sally S. Dick-
erson, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of
California, Irvine; Kenneth M. Madden, Department of Medicine, Univer-
sity of British Columbia.
Gillian M. Sandstrom is now at Department of Psychology, the Univer-
sity of Essex. Sally S. Dickerson is now at Department of Psychology, Pace
University.
We thank Shirley Bi, Meghan Buckley, Sarah Cheung, Eva Gifford,
Chris Gorczynski, Kiran Kalkat, Jenny Lee, Leah Marks, Jacob Sussman,
Carly Thornton, and Brittany VanSchagan for their assistance with data
collection, and Haiyun Liang for assistance with data management. This
research was supported by Canadian Institute for Health Research Grant
MOP-110968, a University of British Columbia Graduate Research Award
awarded to A.W., and a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada. This work was completed in part
while Sally Dickerson was serving at the National Science Foundation.
Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the National Science Foundation.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ashley V.
Whillans, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia,
2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, 604-220-7975. E-mail:
ashleywhillans@psych.ubc.ca
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Health Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 35, No. 6, 574–583 0278-6133/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0000332
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... For example, Best and Freund (2021) considered donating behaviors, particularly its nonmonetary form, and generativity as aspects of the prosociality concept (20). However, some researchers, such as Whillans et al. (2016), focused on the financial dimension of the prosociality concept (21). Some studies have addressed volunteering as a planned prosocial behavior in older adults (16,(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27). ...
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