Scientists recently found a neural link between giving and happiness. And while this linkage has never been rocket science, now it's also officially real science! So, what does this mean for you and your business? Well, it's simple. To explain, let's use the Transitive Property.
The Transitive Property goes like this: If A = B and B = C, then A = C.
Great, so first let's dive into what this science–which is detailed below–means for your business.
Variables:
A = Giving
B = Happier Employees
C = Better Business Results
Result:
If Giving = Happier Employees and Happier Employees = Happier Customers, then Giving = Happier Customers.
In its simplest form, that relationship is what this discovery means for you and your business. You already know that happier employees are better for business, and probably invest accordingly in new ways to increase employee happiness. What this science—and your team of socially-conscious millennials—should help you realize is that it's time to invest accordingly in providing employees ways to give back.
That's where Percent Pledge comes in. Percent Pledge makes it easy for companies of all sizes to give back. We cover everything for our customers, from nonprofit vetting and matching donations to employee volunteering and impact reporting.
Purpose-driven companies trust our workplace giving platform to authentically increase employee happiness, engage with their workforce, reduce employer turnover, and improve employer brand. Meet with one of our social impact experts to learn more about how we can help your company increase employee happiness.
A neural link between generosity and happiness by Soyoung Q. Park, Thorsten Kahnt, Azade Dogan, Sabrina Strang, Ernst Fehr & Philippe N. Tobler.
Overview: "Generous behavior is known to increase happiness, which could thereby motivate generosity. In this study, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging and a public pledge for future generosity to investigate the brain mechanisms that link generous behavior with increases in happiness. Participants promised to spend money over the next 4 weeks either on others (experimental group) or on themselves (control group). Here, we report that, compared to controls, participants in the experimental group make more generous choices in an independent decision-making task and show stronger increases in self-reported happiness. Generous decisions engage the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in the experimental more than in the control group and differentially modulate the connectivity between TPJ and ventral striatum. Importantly, striatal activity during generous decisions is directly related to changes in happiness. These results demonstrate that top–down control of striatal activity plays a fundamental role in linking commitment-induced generosity with happiness."
