2021-05-04
32 分钟Can money really buy happiness? Michael Norton is a social science researcher who studies how we feel about our spending decisions. His work explores questions like: What’s the best way to spend your cash? How much should you donate to charity? Do credit cards make us unhappy? In this episode, Michael shares the sometimes-surprising findings that can help you use our money to improve your life. Michael is a professor of business administration in the marketing unit at the Harvard Business School. Prior to joining HBS, Michael was a Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. His work has been published in a number of leading academic journals and has been covered in media outlets such as the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman
Ted audio collective, you're listening to how to be a better human.
I'm your host, Chris Duffy.
I'm a comedian, and ask any comedian, and they will tell you that people love to give suggestions for jokes.
You cannot do stand up or write comedy without many of your friends and your family saying, you should write a joke about this.
Or you know, what I've always thought was funny.
But I have one friend, my friend Ivan, who has completely raised the bar on joke suggestions.
Whenever he has something that he thinks is funny and that I should make a joke about, instead of just emailing me or texting me, he sends me a message through paypal that has the joke that he thinks I should tell.
And then also a request for dollar 99 in payment.
Not only does he have a joke that he thinks I should tell, he also gives me the price tag if I decide to use it.
I've yet to take him up on any of his payment requests, but they always bring me joy.
So it is possible for you to get a bill and have it make you laugh.
And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about a lot of ways in which spending money can make us feel good.
How can we be better at spending money in a way that actually does make us happy?
It turns out that while many of us fantasize about hitting the jackpot or having a higher paying job, if we do actually get lucky and end up with more income, we often spend it in ways that are counterproductive and make us feel bad.
So how should you spend your cash?
What's the best way to pay for a vacation?
How should you donate to charity?
And what about credit cards?
Well, today we are talking to someone who has studied these exact things.
Michael Norton gave a talk at TEDx Cambridge about how to optimize spending for happiness.