Helping others is one of the most reliable ways to feel happier

The Short Version

Across four conversations, Yale psychologist Laurie Santos, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy land in the same place: turning your time, money and attention toward other people is one of the most dependable ways to feel better yourself [1][2][3][4]. Happier people give and volunteer more even after accounting for income and free time. Experiments that hand people money and tell them to spend it on someone else find they end up happier than people who spend it on themselves [2][3]. How employees spent a bonus predicted their happiness better than how big it was [3]. The main conditions are that the help has to be freely chosen, it works best when the person receiving it really needs it and notices it, and nobody is saying you should give away more than you can afford [1][3]. Santos puts the counterintuitive part plainly: "happy people don't spend a lot of time on themselves" [2].

Table of contents

What They Said

Laurie Santos: our instincts point the wrong way

Santos teaches Psychology and the Good Life, the most popular course in Yale's 300-year history. Her whole approach starts from the claim that most of us pursue happiness in ways that don't work [1][2]. We put in effort, and sometimes money, "But we tend to be taking the things that don't get us there," as she told Mel Robbins [1]. Other-orientation is one of the clearest examples. In her five-part program for "rewiring" yourself for happiness, becoming more other-oriented is strategy number two, right after social connection. Her short version: spending time and money on others makes us happier, even though our intuitions and our culture push the other way [1].

With Huberman, she aimed that argument at self-care culture directly. She called doing things for others "another behavioral hack that's huge for happiness," and "one that we get wrong as a culture in the US." Popular happiness advice, she said, is full of "all this talk about self-care or treat yourself," and "self-self-self-self-self." The data describe something else: "If you look at happy people, though, happy people don't spend a lot of time on themselves. They tend to be very other oriented" [2].

She backed this with two kinds of evidence. The first is correlational. "Controlled for income, happier people donate more money to charity than not so happy people. Control for the amount of free time people have happy people tend to volunteer for others." Whether it's formal helping or donated time, "they tend to help more than not so happy people" [2]. Santos is open about the limits of that finding: "That again, correlation, it could be happy doing nice stuff for others helps you become happy. It could be that if you're happy you do nice stuff for others. And for sure that link is true" [2].

The second kind is experimental, and it answers the causation question. "Lots of experiments have forced people to do nice stuff for others and found that it winds up making them happier" [2]. Her main example is a study by Lara Aknin and colleagues. Researchers approached people on the street and handed them $20. Some were told to spend it on themselves and others on someone else, and the ones who spent it on someone else ended up happier [2]. Santos joked that it's "awesome study to be in if you're some undergrad walking around campus" [2]. Huberman added that he has discovered how much he enjoys giving gifts: "I love, love, love giving gifts. It just, it's the best feeling" [2].

The time paradox

When Santos told Mel Robbins to spend time on others, Robbins objected with what most busy people would say: she has no time to give away [1]. Santos answered with what may be the most counterintuitive finding in this area. Doing something nice for someone else makes you feel like you have more time, because helping tells your brain you have room on your plate [1]. That matters because Santos also presents the feeling of having too little time as a serious threat to happiness. She cites Harvard Business School's Ashley Whillans, whose research found that "if you self-report being time-famished a lot, that's as big a hit on your well-being as if you self-report being unemployed" [1]. So giving a little time can ease the very time famine that makes people feel they can't afford to give.

The link also works the other way. When people feel pressed for time, they help less. Santos describes a classic 1970s study of Princeton seminary students on their way to give a talk about the Good Samaritan. When they were in a hurry, they rarely stopped for a person in need who had been placed along their route [1]. She notes that time pressure also makes us less likely to recycle or help others. In a related study, people primed with words about free time, like "vacation" and "holidays," were more likely to chat with others in a coffee shop and felt happier [1].

It has to be your choice

Santos adds a condition that the upbeat version of this advice usually leaves out. The benefit depends on the giving being voluntary. "If you're doing lots of stuff for other people and you don't have a choice, maybe you're caretaking for an adult in your life or helping someone out or kind of stuck in childcare. If you feel like you have no choice, then that doesn't count." The boost comes when you are willing: "oh, yeah, yeah, I got time to do that. I'm going to choose to do that with my time or my money. Now that's when the benefits start to kick in" [1].

Small, cheap versions

Santos's recommendations are small and specific. With loneliness at "like 60%" and rising in "every demographic group" [1], she suggests scrolling through your contacts, picking the person who might be loneliest, and sending them a note saying you were thinking of them [1]. Her homework for Robbins's listeners was to give at least three meaningful compliments to strangers or to people you know within the next seven days. She calls it a "three-fer": it's other-oriented, it builds social connection, and it makes you notice and savor [1]. Robbins described her own habit of greeting people and paying specific compliments, like on someone's nails, and said the warmth almost always comes back. Santos quoted her colleague Nick Epley: "nobody waves, but everybody waves back" [1].

For people with no spare money or time, she offered one more option with Huberman: ask for help. "Think about the last time somebody asked you for advice, advice that you could give. Probably felt pretty good. It probably made you feel a little competent." Her point is that "asking other people for help, especially when we know they can kind of do it, can be a way to sort of give them a little gift and make them happy" [2]. She admits it's hard for her personally ("I don't want to be a burden on people. I don't want to be vulnerable"), but says it can be "really useful," "especially if you're a particularly self-sufficient person" [2].

Being useful in your own way

Santos also connects helping to meaning through character strengths and job crafting. She cites Amy Wrzesniewski's research, which found that a quarter to a third of hospital janitorial staff described their work as a calling. One worker on a chemotherapy ward used humor to lift patients' spirits while cleaning. Another, on a coma ward, rearranged the art and plants out of creativity [2]. Huberman summed up what he took from this: "we get tremendous pleasure from being useful to others in ways that really resonate with kind of who we feel we are" [2].

"Isn't focusing on my happiness selfish?"

Santos says the question she hears most often is how people facing war, grief or bad news in the world can justify working on their own happiness [1]. Her answer turns the objection around, and it connects well-being and helping in both directions. Research by Kostadin Kushlev at Georgetown found that people who take action, for example on climate, report more positive emotion. In her words, "the people who are taking the action are the ones who are happiest" [1][2]. She also describes the "feel good do good effect": in studies that played upbeat or sad music at a gym, people leaving in a good mood were more likely to volunteer for a survey, help someone or donate blood. "People when they listen to the good music or are in a better mood just wind up doing the nice thing that takes them some time and energy, but it's for good cause" [1]. Her conclusion: "one of the reasons the world is burning so badly is that like we're all not feeling so good" [1].

Andrew Huberman: prosocial spending as a named tool

In his solo episode on happiness, Huberman lists giving as one of a handful of concrete tools for what Dan Gilbert's field calls "synthetic happiness," meaning happiness produced by deliberate action and mindset rather than by getting something [3]. Huberman says he would rather call it "self-directed happiness," and that it may be as powerful as natural happiness or more so [3].

His main evidence is a 2008 paper in Science by Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues, titled "spending money on others promotes happiness" [3]. The paper starts from the observation that "income has a reliable but surprisingly weak effect on happiness within nations," especially once basic needs are met. Its findings, as Huberman summarizes them:

• Prosocial spending, meaning giving to other people or to causes, was linked to significantly greater happiness. That effect was independent of income and about as large as income's effect [3].
• Personal spending was unrelated to happiness [3].
• In a study of employees who received bonuses, those who gave away more of the bonus were happier, and "the manner which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself" [3].

Huberman qualifies this carefully. He says it isn't a call to give away all your money: whatever fraction you can afford helps [3]. He treats time and effort as equally valid ways to give, and lists examples: serving at food kitchens, community gardening, picking up trash, helping a neighbor with childcare, or fetching a neighbor's paper [3]. His most useful detail concerns the recipient: the benefit to the giver grows with how much the recipient actually needs the help and registers it [3].

He found the same pattern in gratitude research. Receiving gratitude, or even witnessing it, is a stronger stimulus than listing things you're grateful for. Effects are largest when the giving is genuine and the receiver truly needs it [3]. So on Huberman's reading, the benefits of generosity reach whoever sees it, not only the giver and the receiver.

He tells two stories from his own life. As a grad student living in the lab, he found real meaning in exchanging a few words with the janitors each morning. He missed them over the holidays, and his journals from that period show he was very happy [3]. Before he could own a dog, he walked shelter dogs on Sundays and posted a free dog-walking ad on Craigslist, which made him very happy [3]. Neither was costly or dramatic. Both were small, regular, freely chosen acts of showing up for others, people or animals.

Vivek Murthy: service as medicine for a lonely country

The Surgeon General comes at this through public health, and his concern is loneliness. He reports that about one in two American adults report measurable loneliness, and that 70 to 80 percent of young people say they struggle with it, depending on the survey [4]. He links loneliness and isolation to higher risks of depression, anxiety and suicide, a 29 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease, a 31 percent higher risk of stroke, a 50 percent higher risk of dementia in older adults, and premature death, with a mortality impact he says exceeds that of obesity [4]. He warns that "loneliness is a great masquerader": it can show up as withdrawal, anger, irritability or aloofness in people who look fine from the outside [4].

Service is central to his remedy. He ended his conversation with Huberman with three daily questions. The third is about service: "do we look for ways to serve one another, recognizing that it's through our acts of service, that we actually forge powerful connections, but we also remind ourselves how much value we have to bring to the world" [4]. He ties this to self-esteem, which he sees being worn down, especially in young people on social media: "this is important in the time when the self-esteem of so many of us and our young people in particular is being eroded" [4].

His other two questions point outward too. "Do we pick up the phone and call them to say, hey, I'm thinking about you. We can all do that today" [4]. And do we give people our full attention, "recognizing that while time is scarce, our attention has the ability to stretch time. It can make five minutes feel like half an hour" [4]. That closely matches Santos's point that helping makes time feel more plentiful [1].

Murthy also presents other-orientation as a truer picture of human nature than the one public life suggests. "I know that it feels like we're a nation of people who are mean, who only care about ourselves... But I actually don't think that's really who we are." Instead, "In our hearts, we are interdependent creatures who recognize that if someone else is suffering, we want to be out there to support them and who want people to be there to support us as well" [4]. He quotes an African proverb, "we can go fast if we go alone, but if we really want to go far, we go together," and calls on the country to choose an identity built on kindness, generosity, courage and service [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Where they agree. All three reject the idea that well-being comes mainly from getting more for yourself. Santos says the data show happy people are "very other oriented" [2]. Huberman reports that personal spending was unrelated to happiness while prosocial spending was not [3]. Murthy calls service a way to "forge powerful connections" and remember our own worth [4]. All three favor small, repeatable acts over grand gestures: a compliment, a note to a lonely friend, a five-minute call, fetching a neighbor's paper [1][3][4]. And all three connect giving to social connection. Santos places other-orientation right after connection in her program, Huberman groups giving with presence, eye contact and touch under "meaning and connection," and Murthy treats service mainly as a cure for isolation [1][3][4].

What is the good actually about? Their emphasis differs. Santos and Huberman frame giving as a way to feel happier, backed by experiments that measure happiness [2][3]. Murthy mostly frames it as a way to build connection and self-worth, and the numbers he gives concern loneliness's harms rather than direct happiness gains from serving [4]. These views fit together rather than conflict, since Santos treats social connection as the strongest behavioral predictor of happiness [2]. Still, the Surgeon General's case for service is more about public health than about a measured boost in mood.

Does money matter? Here there's a real difference. Huberman's framing is that money can't buy happiness "but it certainly can buffer stress," by paying for childcare, cleaning or night nurses, and he says it would be inaccurate and even disrespectful to claim money doesn't matter [3]. Santos told Huberman the data may not support even the stress-buffering claim, though wealth can make risk feel safer [2]. With Robbins, she did endorse spending money to buy back time [1]. Both agree that above a basic level, extra income adds little [1][2][3]. That's exactly why the Dunn result stands out: how you spend money predicted happiness better than how much you had [3]. Huberman's caveat that nobody should give away money they need fits his view that money buffers stress [3].

Which way does causation run? Santos admits the link goes both ways: happier people help more, and helping makes people happier [2]. The "feel good do good" research shows the first direction [1], and the Aknin $20 experiment and the Dunn bonus study support the second [2][3]. None of the speakers claims only one direction is real.

Is all helping good for you? Santos draws a firm line that the others don't: helping you feel you have no choice about, such as unchosen caretaking or being "stuck in childcare," "doesn't count" [1]. Huberman adds a different condition, that the recipient's real need and awareness shape the benefit [3]. Together they suggest the boost depends both on the giver's freedom and on the help actually landing.

Why It Works

The sources offer several mechanisms.

It uses the strongest behavioral lever, connection. Santos says time with friends and family and time physically around other people are the two strongest predictors of happiness in daily-activity studies [2]. Other-oriented acts are usually social acts, so they tap the same source. Murthy says the same thing from the other side: acts of service are how "we actually forge powerful connections" [4].

It corrects a known forecasting error. Santos says "our mind lies to us when it comes to our happiness" [2]. Nick Epley's term for the error is "undersociality": we know giving compliments, expressing gratitude or handing a stranger a hot chocolate will be pleasant, but we underestimate how pleasant. People predict about a three out of ten and experience something closer to a six [2]. Commuters paid to talk to strangers expected it to be awkward and came away more positive, more energized and less lonely [1]. If people consistently underestimate the payoff, they will do too little of it on instinct. That is why the experts treat it as something to practice deliberately.

It changes how you experience time. Helping signals to the brain that you have room on your plate, so you feel more time-affluent [1]. Murthy's observation that full attention "can make five minutes feel like half an hour" fits the same pattern [4]. Since time famine hurts well-being about as much as unemployment [1], this matters.

It gives a sense of competence and worth. Being asked for help "probably made you feel a little competent" [2]. Murthy says service reminds us "how much value we have to bring to the world" [4]. The hospital janitors who reframed their work as a calling show how being useful in a way that fits your strengths creates meaning [2].

It gets past hedonic adaptation. Santos explains that we get used to good things, like first-class flights, fine restaurants and higher salaries, until they stop giving a boost [1][2]. That fits Huberman's report that personal spending was unrelated to happiness [3]. The sources don't spell out why prosocial spending escapes the same fade, but the pattern in the data is clear.

It sets off an upward spiral. The feel-good-do-good effect means a good mood makes people more likely to help [1], and helping raises mood [2][3]. Kushlev's finding that people who take action report more positive emotion suggests the two build on each other [1][2].

Its effects spread beyond the two people involved. Huberman notes that witnessing gratitude is itself a strong stimulus [3], and Santos describes emotional contagion: "We're literally catching the emotions of other people," so caring about the happiness of those around us directly shapes our own [2].

Huberman ties this to broader brain chemistry. He describes synthetic happiness as linked to dopamine, where effort and anticipation often matter more than the reward itself [3]. With Santos, he contrasted effortless dopamine hits, which tend to leave you in a trough, with the effort of calling or visiting someone, which is part of what makes it rewarding [2]. On this view, giving takes effort, and that effort is part of why it pays off.

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

It applies once basic needs are met. Santos is careful to say that for people without food or shelter, or living in a refugee camp, circumstances matter a great deal [1]. Robbins described the "cruel and relentless stress" of not covering basic needs [1]. The Dunn paper's framing is also about income's weak effect "particularly once basic needs are met" [3]. Nobody here says someone struggling to pay rent should give money away. Huberman explicitly recommends building savings for two to 12 months of expenses [3].

It applies to chosen giving, not forced obligation. Unchosen caretaking doesn't produce the same benefit, according to Santos [1]. People worn out from caring for others shouldn't hear this as a reason to take on more. The research points to helping you choose, not to more duty.

It works best when the help matters to someone. Huberman's point that the benefit grows with the recipient's need and awareness [3] suggests that token, anonymous or unwanted "help" will do less for you than help someone actually feels.

It doesn't require money or free time. Huberman lists time and effort as full substitutes for money [3]. Santos offers compliments, a note to a lonely contact, and asking for help as nearly free options [1][2], and Murthy's five-minute call costs nothing [4].

It supports feeling good; it doesn't replace treatment. The speakers present other-orientation as one strong lever among several, alongside connection, presence, gratitude, sleep, exercise and focus [1][2][3]. Santos also warns against toxic positivity: negative emotions work "like that dashboard on your car." Loneliness signals a need for connection, and overwhelm signals you should take something off your plate [2]. Kindness to others doesn't remove the need to listen to those signals. Anyone dealing with persistent depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts should talk to a doctor or mental health professional. Helping others can support recovery, but it isn't a treatment on its own.

The size of the effect is modest but real. Santos says her full program can make people about five to 15 percent happier, and that happiness works "kind of like a leaky tire" that needs regular refilling [1]. Other-oriented acts are one way to top it up, not a one-time fix.

What To Do With It

1. Give three meaningful compliments this week. This is Santos's homework: within seven days, give at least three compliments to strangers or people you know, in a way that really matters to them. It combines other-orientation, connection and paying attention [1].
2. Message the loneliest person in your contacts. Scroll through your phone, pick the person who might be most isolated, and send a short note saying you were thinking of them [1]. Murthy's version is to call someone you care about for five minutes a day and say, "hey, I'm thinking about you" [4].
3. Spend a small, planned amount on someone else. Following the Dunn and Aknin findings [2][3], set aside whatever amount you can comfortably afford, even the equivalent of the $20 in Aknin's study, and spend it on another person or a cause instead of yourself. Don't stretch past what you can afford [3].
4. When you get unexpected money, give some of it away. In the bonus study, how people spent the bonus predicted happiness better than its size [3]. Put a portion of the next windfall toward someone else.
5. Give effort when you can't give money. Serve at a food kitchen, join a community garden, pick up trash, help a neighbor with childcare or fetch their paper [3]. Huberman's version was walking shelter dogs on Sundays [3].
6. Aim your help where it's needed and noticed. The benefit grows with how much the recipient needs the help and registers it [3], so choose acts that make a real difference to a specific person.
7. Choose it; don't just endure it. Only count help you freely choose [1]. If you're a caregiver who feels trapped, look for small parts of the role you can choose, and get support for the rest.
8. Ask someone for advice. Especially if you're very self-sufficient, asking a capable person for help gives them a chance to feel competent and useful. It's "a gift to someone else" [2].
9. Use your strengths in service of others. Following the job-crafting research, find ways your own strengths, like humor, creativity or care, can lift the people you already work with or serve [2].
10. Give full attention. Murthy's point is that attention "has the ability to stretch time" [4]. Put the phone away during conversations. Santos notes that phones that are merely present cut smiling between strangers by about 30 percent [1][2].

Sources

1. The Science of Well-Being: Powerful Happiness Hacks That 5 Million People Are Using · The Mel Robbins Podcast
2. Dr. Laurie Santos: How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols · Huberman Lab
3. Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness · Huberman Lab
4. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy: Efforts & Challenges in Promoting Public Health · Huberman Lab