The true gifts are the ones we give!

真正的礼物是我们给的!

That’s not just a trite¹ Christmas-ism, either. A new study has found that the happiness levels of people who give gifts is much higher than those who receive gifts.

这当然不只是老套的圣诞节习俗。一项新的研究发现，送礼物的人比收礼物的人快乐得多。

In fact, while the happiness from getting gifts quickly diminishes over a few days, the joy from giving sticks with us for days after, according to the study published in the journal Psychological Science.

根据发表在《心理科学》杂志上的一项研究，事实上，虽然收到礼物后的幸福感会在几天内迅速降低，但送礼物后带来的愉悦感会持续几天。

To put the concept to the test, the researchers gave 96 participants $5 gift cards that they either spent on themselves or spent on charities or tip jars.

为了验证这个概念，研究人员给了96名参与者5美元的礼品卡，他们要么把它花在自己身上，要么花在慈善机构或小费上。

Upon reflection, the people who spent money on themselves were initially² pretty happy, but over the course of those five days, their bliss³ faded. Meanwhile, the ones who gave the money away remained content for five days.

据反馈，那些把钱花在自己身上的人最初都很快乐，但他们的幸福感在这五天的时间里逐渐减退了。与此同时，那些把钱捐出去的人五天都感觉很满足。

In a larger experiment of about 500 people, the same researchers challenged people online to a puzzle game, in which they could win 5 cents per round, and could either keep or donate to a charity. Then they asked the participants how happy they were.

在一项大约有500人参加的更大型实验中，同样的研究人员在网上向人们挑战玩一款益智游戏，每轮游戏可以赢5美分，可以把钱留着或捐给慈善机构。然后他们问参与者他们有多快乐。

Again giving prevailed: those who chose to donate their winnings had sustained happiness for days after they won, compared to those who kept their winnings.

捐赠再次占了上风:与那些保留奖金的人相比，那些选择捐赠奖金的人在赢得奖金后几天内仍能保持幸福感。

“Our research reveals [that]…repeated giving, even in identical ways to identical others, may continue to feel relatively⁴ fresh and relatively pleasurable the more that we do it,” says University of Chicago Booth School of Business psychology⁵ researcher Ed O’Brien in a statement.

芝加哥大学布斯商学院的研究人员埃德·奥布莱恩在一份声明中说：“我们的研究表明，给予得越多，即使是以相同的方式反复给予相同的人，可能依旧会感到相对的新鲜和愉快。”