O. Henry's short story "The Gift of the Magi" is, at its heart, a lesson about selflessness. James and Della were desperately poor, yet they loved each other more than anything in the world. Christmas was coming and they had nothing — no savings, no plan. Each wanted to give the other an unforgettable gift, but neither could scrape together the money. In the end, James sold his most treasured possession — a gold pocket watch passed down through generations like a family heirloom — to buy Della a set of ornamental combs. Della, meanwhile, cut and sold her long, flowing golden hair — hair so beautiful it would have made a fairy-tale princess weep with envy — to buy James a watch chain. Each sacrificed what was most precious to them for the sake of the other. And by a cruel twist of fate, each gift rendered the other useless: combs for hair that was gone, a chain for a watch that had been sold.
When James saw what had happened, he said to his tearful wife: "Darling, let us put our presents away for now. They are too precious a present to use just yet." Note the double meaning — present as gift and present as this very moment. O. Henry reportedly said of his characters: "I have told you the story of two foolish young people who each sacrificed, for the other, the greatest treasures of their home. But let me say a last word to the wise: of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi."
How Altruistic Are We?
How selfless can a human being actually be? The willingness to give up part of what you have so that someone else can thrive — this is what we call altruism. What would happen if spouses, teachers and students, employers and workers all treated one another with genuine selflessness? How many of us could do what Moses did in the Bible — ask God to blot his name from the Book of Life if it meant saving his people? How many could do what Captain Robert F. Scott did during his doomed Antarctic expedition, telling his companions: "I am already finished. Take what you need from my body and get through this blizzard"?
There is a famous thought experiment that gets at the heart of this question: the prisoner's dilemma, from which game theory was born. It is now so widely known that it has appeared on television shows around the world — including Running Man, the beloved Korean variety program, where versions of it are a regular feature. The classic setup goes like this: two accomplices are arrested, but the police lack hard evidence and need confessions. The suspects are placed in separate cells and each is offered a deal — confess, and your sentence drops to two years. But there is a catch: if you confess and your partner stays silent, you could end up taking the fall for everything. Of course, your partner in the next cell is weighing the same calculation. Sound familiar? This is the dilemma that gave rise to game theory, formalized by John Nash — the mathematician portrayed in the film A Beautiful Mind. Through repeated rounds, players tend to gravitate not toward the best possible outcome but toward avoiding the worst one, settling into what is called a Nash equilibrium.
In 2010, the psychologist Carsten De Dreu of the University of Amsterdam published three fascinating experiments in Science, each grounded in game theory. The first asked: does oxytocin make people more altruistic toward members of their own group? The second: does this altruistic impulse show up only in naturally cooperative people, or does it also emerge in those who tend toward selfishness? The third: when aggression is framed as self-defense — attacking someone to protect yourself — does oxytocin fuel that, too?
The results were eye-opening. When participants inhaled oxytocin, they became significantly more willing to share resources with members of their own group — and this held true regardless of whether they were naturally cooperative. But oxytocin did not increase parochial altruism — the kind of aggression directed at outsiders in the name of defending one's own. This distinction matters a great deal. True altruism, at its core, means sacrificing yourself for others. Taken to an extreme, the most "selfless" people on the planet might be terrorists — people who kill citizens of other nations in the name of their homeland. Thankfully, oxytocin promotes only the genuine, selfless kind of altruism, not the narrow and tribal kind.1
Boost Your Happiness Through Altruistic Oxytocin
When are we happier — acting in our own interest or acting for someone else? You hardly need a study to know the answer. When I give someone I love what they need and watch their face light up, my own happiness grows in proportion. It is just how we are wired. When a child's birthday approaches, no parent complains about "throwing money away" on a party at a family restaurant. Watching your child eat happily, with pure unselfconscious delight, is its own reward. As the Korean saying goes, "A parent feels full just watching food go into their child's mouth."
For me, the happiest moments as a professor come when I secure a research grant large enough to give my students scholarships. A close second is the moment a student calls to tell me their paper has been accepted for publication as first author — hearing the excitement in their voice. Altruistic acts push us toward the most intense happiness we can experience. The Korean singer and philanthropist Sean — known for his tireless charity — once said that the happiness he feels from helping others without conditions is "like a drug." That drug, it turns out, is oxytocin.
Money cannot buy happiness. Beyond what covers the basics of life, wealth often marks not the beginning of joy but the onset of misery. Ironically, the more people fixate on money, the unhappier they become, and the wealthier they grow, the more time they spend alone rather than giving to others. Money, it seems, pushes people away.
Elizabeth Dunn, a professor at the University of British Columbia, and Michael Norton of Harvard Business School carefully analyzed the happiness, annual income, and spending habits of 632 people. They paid close attention to spending categories: how much went to basic necessities versus prosocial spending — money spent on doing things with and for other people. The amount people spent on themselves had no relationship whatsoever to their happiness. But prosocial spending showed a strong correlation with well-being.
These findings were later published in the book Happy Money. To test the hypothesis further, Dunn and Norton surveyed employees who had received bonuses of roughly six million won, examining how they spent the money before the bonus and again six to eight weeks afterward. The results were the same. The more people had spent on others, the happier they were. We feel genuine fulfillment when we share what we have, or when we see someone else light up because of our generosity. Humans are simply programmed this way.2
Does oxytocin play a role in this instinct to give? Paul Zak's research team divided ninety-six students into three groups. The first received professional massages while playing a trust game. The second received only massages. The third played the trust game without any massage. Students in the first two groups enjoyed fifteen minutes of skilled bodywork. The results were telling: massage alone did not meaningfully raise oxytocin levels. But the combination of massage and the trust game did — oxytocin secretion was clearly activated in that first group, and the levels tracked precisely with how much participants trusted and invested in their partners.
After the experiment, researchers collected voluntary donations. Students who had experienced both massage and the trust game gave an average of $17.36. Those who received only a massage gave $6.85. Those who played the trust game alone gave just $2.00. The group that received both trust and touch donated nearly three times as much as the massage-only group, and as oxytocin levels rose, so did the impulse to give — an effect that was especially pronounced in women. The bottom line: the higher our oxytocin, the more we trust, the more generously we give, and the happier we become. This is the altruistic happiness that oxytocin teaches us.3