full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Michael Norton: How to buy happiness

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So if you give undergraduates five dollars, it looks like coffee to them, and they run over to Starbucks and spend it as fast as they can. Some people bought coffee for themselves, the way they usually would, but others bguhot coffee for somebody else. So the very same phcrause, just targeted toward yourself or tategred toward somebody else. What did we find when we called at the end of the day? People who spent money on others got happier; people who spent it on themselves, nothing happened. It didn't make them less hpapy, it just didn't do much for them.

Open Cloze

So if you give undergraduates five dollars, it looks like coffee to them, and they run over to Starbucks and spend it as fast as they can. Some people bought coffee for themselves, the way they usually would, but others ______ coffee for somebody else. So the very same ________, just targeted toward yourself or ________ toward somebody else. What did we find when we called at the end of the day? People who spent money on others got happier; people who spent it on themselves, nothing happened. It didn't make them less _____, it just didn't do much for them.

Solution

  1. happy
  2. bought
  3. targeted
  4. purchase

Original Text

So if you give undergraduates five dollars, it looks like coffee to them, and they run over to Starbucks and spend it as fast as they can. Some people bought coffee for themselves, the way they usually would, but others bought coffee for somebody else. So the very same purchase, just targeted toward yourself or targeted toward somebody else. What did we find when we called at the end of the day? People who spent money on others got happier; people who spent it on themselves, nothing happened. It didn't make them less happy, it just didn't do much for them.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
spend money 4
give money 4
spent money 4
give people 4
bought coffee 2
giving money 2
dodgeball teams 2

Important Words

  1. bought
  2. called
  3. coffee
  4. day
  5. dollars
  6. fast
  7. find
  8. give
  9. happened
  10. happy
  11. money
  12. people
  13. purchase
  14. run
  15. spend
  16. spent
  17. starbucks
  18. targeted
  19. undergraduates