From: NPR
Why Are Kids Who Get Less Candy Happier On Halloween?
NPR:
What makes trick-or-treaters happy is candy. And more candy is better, right?
Well, it turns out that might not actually be the case. A few years ago researchers did on Halloween night where some trick-or-treaters were given a candy bar, and others were given the candy bar and a piece of bubble gum.
Now, in any rational universe, you would imagine that the kids who got the candy bar and the bubble gum would be happier than the kids who got just the candy bar. George Wolford, a psychologist at Dartmouth College, and his fellow researchers, Amy Doe and Alexander Rupert, found something quite different.
“Those children that got both the full-sized candy bar and the bubble gum second, rated how delighted they were to get these treats lower than those people that got the candy bar only,” Wolford says.
To understand what actually is going on we have to go back to the crib, to an earlier study done by Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University, who won the Nobel Prize in economics. Wolford calls it one of his favorite studies in all of psychology.
Read the whole story: NPR
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