Published 29. October 2026
It is a sunny Thursday afternoon. Marit decides she has earned twenty minutes outside and leaves her desk. Her colleague Marion ends up on the same bench because an IT update has frozen her laptop. Same sun, same bench, same twenty minutes. Walking back into the building, they pass the receptionist, who is struggling with a heavy box and asks for a hand. Who is more likely to stop and help?
Most would guess it makes no difference, or that Marit, who just treated herself, would help less. Popular culture and classical economics have long framed pleasure as selfish and helping as a zero-sum game: what we spend on ourselves cannot go to others. Our research challenges this intuition. When people purposefully indulge in everyday pleasures, they become more prosocial, not less.
The reason lies in the inferences people draw from their own choices. Through self-signaling, we look at our own actions to understand our inner state. When you deliberately choose to do something purely for your own pleasure—enjoying some chocolate, watching an entertaining video, booking a massage, or taking a sunny break—you signal to yourself that you are treating yourself with kindness. The same pleasure, imposed by circumstances, sends no such signal.
Decisions to help others can feel like a competition between self-interest and other-interest. When your own well-being is already affirmed through an intentional act of self-care, that trade-off weighs less.
Same pleasure, different choice
We tested nearly 2,800 participants across seven experiments, in the laboratory and online. The key was isolating intentionality: we compared people who freely chose to indulge with those who had the exact same experience dictated to them.
In our food experiments, both groups ate exactly the same number of treats, ruling out calories or a sugar rush as explanations. The results were striking: participants who freely chose their chocolate consumption afterwards volunteered to check 54 percent more exams for a busy exam office than those whose intake was instructed. In another experiment, participants who freely enjoyed biscuits donated more than twice as much of their fee to Save the Children.
Nor does the effect require spending money. When we presented a version of the sunny-afternoon scenario to 600 people, those who imagined choosing their break were more willing to volunteer for a charity than those whose break was forced by an IT update.
Intentional indulgence also made people share more with strangers in an allocation game. In two studies, self-compassion fully explained the rise in willingness to help. We also ruled out alternative accounts: heightened prosociality was not driven by positive mood, nor was it an attempt to cleanse guilt from a 'sinful' treat.
Limits and lessons
There are two limits. First, the experience must be pleasurable. When participants freely chose how many plain rice crackers to eat, their giving and sharing did not budge. Second, the request must not be too burdensome. Intentional pleasure boosted willingness to volunteer online, but the effect faded when volunteering meant traveling an hour.
The lessons are practical. Rather than selling treats as 'guilt-free', as if pleasure needed an excuse, brands can present them as a deliberate act of kindness to oneself. Customers who have chosen to treat themselves may also be more generous towards staff and tip more. Charities may do best with easy requests placed right after people have chosen to enjoy themselves. And leaders who encourage breaks that employees choose, rather than impose, may get a more cooperative workplace. Marit, on her bench in the sun, was not being selfish.
Source
Cristian, Daniela Carmen, Bob Fennis, Anirban Mukhopadhyay, and Luk Warlop. "Intentional Hedonic Consumption Motivates Prosocial Behavior." International Journal of Research in Marketing, vol. 43, 2026, pp. 404–419, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2025.07.002.
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