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A good night's sleep is essential for a person's health, but it might do more than that. According to a recent research, it is linked to a person's well-being, their feeling of gratitude and giving. It has been also observed that certain "prosocial behaviors" like saying 'Thank You', and the act of philanthropy are essential for our psychological well-being.

Our psychological well-being also reflects on the ways in which we utilize our finances. From a tender age, children develop a mechanism that allows them to assist others. In a new research, it has been found that philanthropy affects a person's psyche in a positive way. The research, which covered people from around the world, found that people are happier in the act of giving than spending money on themselves.

"For the first time, we show that giving away money or spending it on others confers the ironic psychological benefit of increasing the giver's sense of wealth. Our results suggest when the poor give money away, that very act might mitigate their feelings of poverty. More broadly than this specific benefit, our investigation contributes to the growing body of research documenting the benefits of prosocial behavior, which include greater happiness, reduced mortality, and better immune function," Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and co-author with Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia of the upcoming book Happy Money, was quoted as saying in Medical Xpress.

Norton also found in a recent research that spending some time assisting another person gives the person a feeling of having more time on their hands. "In fact, giving time away alleviates people's sense of time famine even more than receiving unexpected windfalls of free time," he added.

This also explains why the amount of money given by a poor person is higher than that of a middle class income person, especially considering their income and the part of it that is given away.