The belief that “it’s better to give than to receive” can be traced back at least as far as the Bible. But while the sentiment is often understood as a moral lesson, there’s also a vast amount of scientific support for the benefits of generosity. As gift-giving ramps up amid the holiday season, those wondering how they end up spending so much might be interested to learn that generosity offers a wide range of benefits — neurological, psychological and even evolutionary.
“Studies of generosity in the human brain have revealed several regions involved in these behaviors,” says Catherine Franssen, a neuroscientist at Longwood University and the Science Museum of Virginia.
She points to a study published in Nature Communications in 2017, led by investigators at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, that compared subjects’ brain activity while spending money on themselves or on others. Those that spent on others had increased activity in the temporal parietal junction and ventral striatum, parts of the brain associated with empathy and happiness respectively.
