Giving REALLY is Better than Receiving!

By Maria Konnikova, January 4, 2017

“Human generosity, far from being a thin veneer of cultural conditioning atop a Machiavellian core, may turn out to be a bedrock feature of human nature,” concluded psychologists from UC-Santa Barbara in a recent study. Perhaps the treasured gifts of the heart that Jim and Della exchanged in O. Henry’s short story “The Gift of the Magi,” can indeed remind us something about the power of generosity and gift-giving and the truth that there is more joy in giving than in receiving. (Photo: Asenat29, Creative Commons)

About the Author

Maria is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Confidence Game (Viking/Penguin 2016) and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking/Penguin, 2013). She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, where she writes a regular column with a focus on psychology and culture, and is currently working on an assortment of non-fiction and fiction projects. Her first book, Mastermind, has been translated into eighteen languages. It was nominated for the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best Non-fiction and was a Goodreads People’s Choice Semifinalist for 2013. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, California Sunday, Pacific Standard, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, The Boston Globe, The Observer, Scientific American MIND, WIRED, and Scientific American, among numerous other publications. Maria is a recipient of the 2015 Harvard Medical School Media Fellowship, and is a Schachter Writing Fellow at Columbia University’s Motivation Science Center.See Maria Konnikova's website.

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