金錢或許真的能買來幸福
The Beatles may still be right: money can't buy you love - but it could buy you happiness, according to new research.
新研究表明：披頭士說的話也許仍然成立：金錢不能給你買來愛情--但卻能買給你幸福。
But there's a catch - what you're actually buying is time. The study published in the official scientific journal of the National Academy of Sciences involved more than 6,200 people in the US, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands. It asked people how much they spent on time-saving services and how this made them feel. Researchers also gave a group of 60 people in Vancouver money to buy an item on one weekend and to purchase a service that saved them time on the next weekend, and compared the effects.
但也是有陷阱存在的--你真正買到的是時間。美國國家科學院的官方科學雜誌上刊出了這篇研究，研究了美國、加拿大、丹麥和新西蘭的6200多位人士。研究人員詢問人們花在省時服務上的費用，以及這給他們帶來的感受。同時，研究人員在第一週的時候給了60位溫哥華人一筆錢買東西，第二週的時候讓他們把錢花在省時的服務上，之後比較效果。
The results from both parts of the study showed that rather than splashing out on material things in the pursuit of happiness, you'd be better off paying someone to clean your house, do your food shopping or carry out home repairs.
研究的這兩個部分都得出了這樣的結果：相比花錢買物質品追求幸福，花錢請別人打掃家裏、買菜或維修傢俱倒更使人快樂。
But even people who can afford to pay for labour-saving services don't always take advantage of this route to more time and greater happiness. The survey included 818 Dutch millionaires and found that almost half did not spend money on outsourcing tasks that they don't like doing.
但即使人們負擔得起節省勞力的服務，他們也不總是利用這一點來獲得更多的時間和幸福。這一研究包括818位荷蘭籍的百萬富翁，並發現：基本一半的百萬富翁都不會花錢請別人做他們不喜歡做的事情。
"People who hire a house cleaner or pay the kid next door to mow the lawn might feel like they're being lazy," said one of the researchers, Professor Ashley Whillans, of Harvard Business School.
"花錢請清潔工或給錢給鄰居的小孩讓他們修剪草坪會給人懶惰之感，"其中一位來自哈佛商學院的研究員阿什利·威爾蘭斯教授說道。
"But our results suggest that buying time has similar benefits for happiness as having more money." So buying back time could be a way to indirectly buy happiness. But what if how you go about spending money was the deciding factor?
"但我們的結果表明：花錢買時間與擁有更多的錢能夠帶來同樣的幸福感。"所以買時間可能間接的買到了幸福。但如果怎麼花錢纔是決定性因素呢？
If we splash the cash in a way that fits our personality type we are likely to be more satisfied with life, according to research by the University of Cambridge that looked at more than 76,800 transactions from 625 people over a six-month period. Each transaction was analysed to determine whether it fitted with one of the big five personality attributes - openness, conscientiousness, extra-version, agreeableness or neuroticism.
劍橋大學的一項研究調查了625人在6個月間的76800餘次交易記錄，研究發現：如果我們花錢的方式與我們的性格相投，那我們對生活的滿意度很有可能就會更高。研究員分析了每一次的交易以確定是否與人們的五大性格特徵之一符合，即開放性、盡責性、外傾性、宜人性和神經質性。
