This week’s column topic comes from my younger brother Dan Donatelli (no relation). Dan forwarded me a Reuters article entitled Money buys happiness – if you spend it on someone else. The headline is drawn from the conclusion reached by a group of researchers from the University of British Columbia (Go Thunderbirds!) and Harvard Business School (Go ThunderCaseMethods!)

According to the researchers, none of whom I’m guessing owns a Lamborghini Diablo, spending as little as $5 a day on someone else could significantly boost the giver’s happiness. Researchers asked 600 American volunteers to rate their happiness, report their income and detail their spending including bills, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.

“Regardless of how much income each person made, those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not,” said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia whom I picture in my head as a bookish 30-something brunette who has been waiting her whole life to meet a man like me.

(Above: What Elizabeth Dunn looks like in my head. She bears a striking resemblence to actress Sabrina Lloyd.)

The researchers also surveyed 16 employees at a Boston company before and after they received a profit-sharing bonus between $3,000 and $8,000. Because I have only worked for old or failing media companies, I had to look up the term “profit-sharing bonus.” But before I could do that, I had to look up the term “profit.” But before I could do that, I had to change the rubber-band-wrapped Ziploc bags I wear in place of shoes.

For the record, profit-sharing bonuses are how companies reward workers when the company succeeds. And rubber-band-wrapped Ziploc bags are what a journalist wears when he’s being chased from a back-alley milk crate toilet by a pack of stray dogs.

In the journal Science the researchers wrote, “Employees who devoted more of their bonus to pro-social spending experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself.”

In a third part of the study, the researchers also gave participants $5 or $20. Those who spent money on someone or something else reported feeling happier about it.

“These findings suggest that very minor alterations in spending allocations – as little as $5 – may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day,” Dunn said, her eyeglasses no doubt perched at the tip of her button nose, her hair probably slightly disheveled from a long day of field research, the top button of her blouse most likely undone, offering a man a glimpse of heaven on earth.

The researchers concluded – and I agree – that when we freely spend money on other people or good causes, it makes us feel good.

All of which led me to a second study. (I promise this will all make sense in the end.)

In a Los Angeles Times article with the headline Study finds happiness lowest at mid-life, staff writer Denise Gellene writes about new research that found that “happiness over the course of a lifetime follows a universal curve in which the greatest bliss occurs at the beginning and end of life, while misery dominates middle age.”

The study was conducted by economists Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England and David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College, both of whom probably had their shot at the lovely Elizabeth Dunn as undergrads and are now recklessly determined to sabotage our love. Their study, which was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, set out to look at the relationship between age and happiness.

The researchers found that in the United States happiness reached its lowest point around age 40 in women and age 50 in men. Researchers were perplexed by the results.

From the article:

Oswald said it was possible that in midlife people learn to accept their strengths and weaknesses and abandon unrealistic aspirations. Another possibility is that cheerful people live longer, driving the curve higher. Another explanation is that older people learn to count their blessings as their peers die, Oswald said. “It’s a mystery,” he said. “There seems to be something inside human beings that is unexplained by life events.”

My first thought was, “Fifty is the age when a man’s boner starts to fade, a problem that would affect both sexes.” But there are pills for that nowadays. So the theory doesn’t stick. This issue goes beyond boners.

God, I love writing.

Here’s my new theory. The young are happy because they’re young. It’s in their nature. The elderly are happy because – assuming they succeed financially, and most do – they can spend money on others, mainly in the form of rock candy. Spending on others is not the whole reason they’re happy, but as the first study concluded, it definitely counts.

Working people have less money to spend on doing good. April 23 was Tax Freedom Day, the theoretical day when you stop working for the government and start working for yourself. Much of your tax money is collected in the name of helping others. But under this arrangement, no one gets to feel good about it, with the possible exception of James Carville, whom I happen to believe is controlled by a smaller James Carville sitting at a tiny futuristic computer bank inside the main James Carville’s chest.

(Above: The smaller of the James Carvilles.)

The American philosopher Samuel Roy Hagar once said, “You’ve got to give to live.” In the U.S. today, the only people who can afford to “live” are the elderly. I can’t wait that long for the fetching Elizabeth Dunn and I to be happy.

Do you have a column idea? E-mail it to me at joedonatellicolumn@gmail.com.

(To hear Mike, Sean, guest Chris Mosier and me talk about this column on The Second Column podcast on iTunes, click here.)

Happiness gets a bad rap.

Throughout history, intellectuals have treated our most exultant feeling as if it were the random fry in our emotional onion rings — a rare exception provided by some outside providence. In the words of leading intelligentsia:

“Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.” — Marcel Proust, French novelist

“Happiness does not await us all. One needn’t be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money.” — Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian author, playwright

“Happiness is always a byproduct. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.” — Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist

Such fatalism is to be expected of citizens from 1.) the surrendering-est country in the surrendering-est part of the world 2.) a nation that seriously thought, “Communism — spectacular idea!” 3.) a people whose habit of ending their sentences with the colloquial “eh?” forever reveals their innermost doubts.

But we in the United States take our happiness seriously. We even wrote the word Happiness — with a capital H no less — into our Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Where some would lead you to believe that the pursuit of happiness is a waste of time, two American researchers have published data suggesting the same conclusion: even in these uncertain times we live in, it is possible to make yourself happy.

William Fleeson, associate professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, has found that acting extroverted makes people happier. Whether a person is shy or outgoing, being more talkative, adventurous, bold or assertive has a positive effect.

College students who tracked their moods for two weeks reported feeling happier when, for example, they sang along with the radio, talked to an attractive girl, or voiced an opinion. They felt less happy when acting reserved.

The study also revealed that the short-term positive effect of acting extroverted carries into the long-term.

“As a society, we tend to think of happiness as something that comes from outside us. It’s kind of a radical idea that we have some control of happiness, that personality is a factor in happiness and that, to some extent, we have control over our personalities,” Fleeson said.

Charles Schaefer agrees. The Fairleigh Dickinson professor recently revealed research that suggests that one minute of laughter — even if forced — can improve your mood.

“Once the brain signals the body to laugh, the body doesn’t care why,” Schaefer told the Washington Post. “It’s going to release endorphins, it’s going to relieve stress as a natural physiological response to the physical act of laughing.

“I believe laughing does at least four things for you. It energizes you. It cheers you up. It relaxes you. It rejuvenates you. For adults, you feel younger. It’s like that Chinese proverb: ‘Every laugh makes you 10 years younger.’ “

Forced laughter — it’s not just for fictitious megalomaniac super-terrorists anymore.

What should we make of Proust, Chekhov, Davies and others who feel happiness is so unattainable they’re compelled to share their failure with the world?

I believe American playground-philosopher Nelson Muntz put it best when he said, “Haw-haw!”

(Originally published 4/7/03.)

Click here to read the previous column “The War on Drugs Starts at Foot Locker.”

If you have a comment, e-mail me at joedonatellicolumn@gmail.com.