Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness

Elizabeth W. Dunn, et al.

Science 319, 1687 (2008);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1150952

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 CORRECTED 29 MAY 2009; SEE LAST PAGE
finely regulated by correlated activities in a
neuronal network and may consolidate nearby
stimulated synapses by autocrine or paracrine
mechanisms. BDNF action was selective on the
spines that showed immediate enlargement,
which may act as the structural tag for selective
trapping (26) of the protein-synthetic machinery
(11, 27) and the capture of plasticity proteins
(2, 28) for long-term spine-head enlargement.
Thus, BDNF acts as an associative messenger for
the consolidation of synaptic plasticity, and the
protein-synthetic process can regulate dendritic
structures at the level of single spines.
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Japan (H.K. and M.M.), the Global COE Program
(Integrative Life Science) of MEXT (H.K.), and NIH
(G.C.R.E.-D. and H.K.).
Supporting Online Material
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1152864/DC1
Materials and Methods
Text
Figs. S1 to S7
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12 November 2007; accepted 21 January 2008

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summed to create an index of prosocial spending

Spending Money on Others (M = $145.96, SD = 306.06). Entering the per-
sonal and prosocial spending indices simultaneous-
Promotes Happiness ly into a regression predicting general happiness
revealed that personal spending was unrelated to
happiness (standardized regression coefficient b =
Elizabeth W. Dunn,1* Lara B. Aknin,1 Michael I. Norton2
0.02, NS), but higher prosocial spending was
associated with significantly greater happiness
Although much research has examined the effect of income on happiness, we suggest that
(b = 0.11, P < 0.01). When we included income
how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn.
in this regression, we found that the effects of
Specifically, we hypothesized that spending money on other people may have a more positive
income (b = 0.11, P < 0.01) and prosocial
impact on happiness than spending money on oneself. Providing converging evidence for this
spending (b = 0.10, P < 0.03) were independent
hypothesis, we found that spending more of ones income on others predicted greater
and similar in magnitude, whereas personal
happiness both cross-sectionally (in a nationally representative survey study) and longitudinally
spending remained unrelated to happiness (b =
(in a field study of windfall spending). Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to
0.04, NS). Although the correlational nature
spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money
of this design precludes causal inferences, this
on themselves.
study provides initial evidence that how people
spend their money may be as important for their
an money buy happiness? A large body choices that thinking about money promotes; the happiness as how much money they earnand

C of cross-sectional survey research has

demonstrated that income has a reliable,
but surprisingly weak, effect on happiness within
nations (13), particularly once basic needs are
met (4). Indeed, although real incomes have
surged dramatically in recent decades, happiness
levels have remained largely flat within devel-
oped countries across time (5). One of the most
intriguing explanations for this counterintuitive
finding is that people often pour their increased
wealth into pursuits that provide little in the way
of lasting happiness, such as purchasing costly
consumer goods (6). An emerging challenge, then,
is to identify whether and how disposable income
might be used to increase happiness.
Ironically, the potential for money to increase
happiness may be subverted by the kinds of
1
Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, the University of
British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada. 2Market-
ing Unit, 189 Morgan Hall, Harvard Business School, Soldiers
Field Road, Boston, MA 02163, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
edunn@psych.ubc.ca
mere thought of having money makes people less
likely to help acquaintances, to donate to charity,
or to choose to spend time with others (7), pre-
cisely the kinds of behaviors that are strongly
associated with happiness (812). At the same
time, although thinking about money may drive
people away from prosocial behavior, money can
also provide a powerful vehicle for accomplish-
ing such prosocial goals. We suggest that using
money in this fashioninvesting income in others
rather than oneselfmay have measurable bene-
fits for one's own happiness.
As an initial test of the relation between spend-
ing choices and happiness, we asked a nationally
representative sample of 632 Americans (55%
female) to rate their general happiness, to report
their annual income, and to estimate how much
they spent in a typical month on (i) bills and
expenses, (ii) gifts for themselves, (iii) gifts for
others, and (iv) donations to charity (13). The
first two categories were summed to create an
index of personal spending [mean (M) = $1713.91,
SD = 1895.65], and the latter two categories were
that spending money on others might represent a
more effective route to happiness than spending
money on oneself (13).
If this interpretation is correct, then people
who receive an economic windfall should experi-
ence greater happiness after receiving the windfall
if they spend it on others rather than themselves,
even controlling for happiness before the windfall.
We tested this prediction by examining the hap-
piness of 16 employees before and after they
received a profit-sharing bonus from their compa-
ny (13). One month before receiving this bonus
(M = $4918.64, SD = 1816.98), the employees
reported their general happiness as well as their
annual income. Approximately 6 to 8 weeks after
receiving the bonus, participants again reported
their general happiness and then reported what
percentage of their bonus they had spent on (i)
bills and expenses, (ii) rent or mortgage, (iii) buy-
ing something for themselves, (iv) buying some-
thing for someone else, (v) donating to charity,
and (vi) other. The first three categories were
summed to create an index of personal spending

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 319 21 MARCH 2008 1687

 REPORTS
(M = 63.44, SD = 38.20), and the fourth and fifth
categories were summed to create an index of
prosocial spending (M = 12.19, SD = 18.35).
Entering Time 1 happiness and our two spend-
ing indices into a regression predicting Time 2
happiness revealed that prosocial spending was
the only significant predictor of happiness at
Time 2 (b = 0.81, P < 0.02). With income in-
cluded as an additional predictor in this regression
(b = 0.03, NS), the effect of prosocial spending
remained significant (b = 0.96, P < 0.02). Simi-
larly, the prosocial spending effect was significant
(b = 0.81, P < 0.03) when controlling for bonus
amount (b = 0.00, NS). Thus, employees who
devoted more of their bonus to prosocial spending
experienced greater happiness after receiving the
bonus, and the manner in which they spent that
bonus was a more important predictor of their
happiness than the size of the bonus itself (13).
Building on our correlational and longitudinal
evidence that spending on others may promote
happiness, we next demonstrated the causal im-
pact of prosocial spending, using experimental
methodology (13). Participants (N = 46) rated
their happiness in the morning and then were
given an envelope that contained either $5 or
$20, which they were asked to spend by 5:00
p.m. that day. Participants randomly assigned to
the personal spending condition were instructed
to spend the money on a bill, an expense, or a gift
for themselves, whereas participants assigned to
the prosocial spending condition were instructed
to spend the money on a gift for someone else or
charitable donation. Participants were called after
5:00 p.m. that day and again reported their hap-
piness. We submitted postwindfall happiness to a
2 (windfall size: $5 versus $20) 2 (spending
direction: personal versus prosocial) between-
subjects analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), with
prewindfall happiness included as a covariate.
This analysis revealed a significant main effect
of spending instructions [F1,41 = 4.39, P < 0.04,
effect size estimate (p2) = 0.10], whereby partic-
ipants in the prosocial spending condition (M =
0.18, SD = 0.62) reported greater postwindfall
happiness than did participants in the personal
1688 21 MARCH 2008
spending condition (M = 0.19, SD = 0.66).
Neither the main effect of windfall size (F1,41 =
0.09, NS) nor the Windfall Size Spending
Direction interaction (F1,41 = 0.12, NS) approached
significance. These experimental results provide
direct support for our causal argument that spend-
ing money on others promotes happiness more
than spending money on oneself.
In moving away from the traditional focus on
income toward an examination of spending
choices, our perspective dovetails with recent
theorizing by Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade
(8) on the architecture of sustainable changes in
happiness. According to Lyubomirsky et al. (8),
the historical focus on life circumstances (e.g.,
income, gender, and religious affiliation) as pre-
dictors of happiness may be somewhat mis-
placed; because people readily adapt to the stable
circumstances of their lives, circumstantial factors
tend to have rather limited long-term effects on
happiness levels. Thus, intentional activities
practices in which people actively and effortfully
choose to engagemay represent a more prom-
ising route to lasting happiness. Supporting this
premise, our work demonstrates that how people
choose to spend their money is at least as im-
portant as how much money they make.
Finally, despite the observable benefits of
prosocial spending, our participants spent rela-
tively little of their income on prosocial ends;
participants in our national survey, for example,
reported devoting more than 10 times as much
money for personal as for prosocial spending
each month. Although personal spending is of
necessity likely to exceed prosocial spending for
most North Americans, our findings suggest that
very minor alterations in spending allocations
as little as $5 in our final studymay be suf-
ficient to produce nontrivial gains in happiness
on a given day. Why, then, dont people make
these small changes? When we provided descrip-
tions of the four experimental conditions from
our final study to a new set of students at the
same university (N = 109) and asked them to
select the condition that would make them hap-
piest, Fishers Exact Tests revealed that partic-
VOL 319 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
ipants were doubly wrong about the impact of
money on happiness; we found that a significant
majority thought that personal spending (n = 69)
would make them happier than prosocial
spending (n = 40) (P < 0.01) and that $20 (n =
94) would make them happier than $5 (n = 15)
(P < 0.0005). Given that people appear to over-
look the benefits of prosocial spending, policy
interventions that promote prosocial spending
encouraging people to invest income in others
rather than in themselvesmay be worthwhile
in the service of translating increased national
wealth into increased national happiness.
References and Notes
1. E. Diener, R. Biswas-Diener, Soc. Indic. Res. 57, 119
(2002).
2. B. S. Frey, A. Stutzer, Econ. J. 110, 918 (2000).
3. D. Kahneman, A. B. Krueger, D. Schkade, N. Schwarz,
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 30, 2011
A. A. Stone, Science 312, 1908 (2006).
4. E. Diener, E. Sandvik, L. Seidlitz, M. Diener, Soc. Indic.
Res. 28, 195 (1993).
5. R. A. Easterlin, J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 27, 35 (1995).
6. R. H. Frank, Daedalus 133, 69 (2004).
7. K. D. Vohs, N. L. Mead, M. R. Goode, Science 314, 1154
(2006).
8. S. Lyubomirsky, K. M. Sheldon, D. Schkade, Rev. Gen. Psychol.
9, 111 (2005).
9. E. Diener, M. E. P. Seligman, Psychol. Sci. 13, 81 (2002).
10. P. A. Thoits, L. N. Hewitt, J. Health Soc. Behav. 42, 115
(2001).
11. J. A. Piliavin, in Flourishing: Positive Psychology and
the Life Well-Lived, C. L. M. Keyes, J. Haidt, Eds.
(APA, Washington, DC, 2003), pp. 227247.
12. T. Kasser, K. M. Sheldon, J. Happiness Stud. 3, 313 (2002).
13. Materials and methods are available as supporting
material on Science Online.
14. This work was funded by a Hampton Research Grant to
the first author. We thank T. Rogers, S. Shababi and
J. Beretta for data collection; J. Biesanz, I. Dar Nimrod,
D. Gilbert, S. Heine, J. Helliwell, S. Lyubomirksy,
A. McConnell, V. Savalei, B. Simpson, and T. Wilson for
helpful input; and J. Goldshine for his invaluable assistance.
Supporting Online Material
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5870/1687/DC1
Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 to S6
Tables S1 and S2
References
25 September 2007; accepted 12 February 2008
10.1126/science.1150952
 CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS

ERRATUM Post date 29 May 2009

Reports: Spending money on others promotes happiness by E. W. Dunn et al. (21 March
2008, p. 1687). We recently identified a bug in the statistical package SPSS 14.0 that we
used to analyze our data. The bug causes the first line of data to overwrite the sixth line of
data (see www.is.stir.ac.uk/itsupport/software/SPSS.php). This bug affected the data set for
our longitudinal study (N = 16). Primarily because this error decreased the variance in our
data set, correcting this error alters the critical statistical test such that the effect of prosocial

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 30, 2011

spending on happiness is reduced from the originally reported effect of b = 0.81, P < 0.02 to
b = 0.55, P < 0.115 (which falls within the 95% confidence interval for the original parame-
ter estimate). The corrected data set is available from the first authors Web site. The other
three studies reported in our paper were unaffected by this bug.

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE ERRATUM POST DATE 29 MAY 2009 1

 COMMENTARY
Race and genomics Telescope astronomy

1144 1149
LETTERS I BOOKS I POLICY FORUM I EDUCATION FORUM I PERSPECTIVES

LETTERS are interested in learning more about agricul-

tural and environmental issues. Job pros-
pects also are good; the Bureau of Labor
edited by Jennifer Sills
Statistics predicts that employment for agri-
cultural and food scientists will be at least
average overall and much higher than aver-
Agriculture Is Not a Dirty Word age in some specialties.
In the long run, does it really matter

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 30, 2011

AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE IS RIPE FOR A RENAISSANCE. FOR TOO MANY YEARS, THE AGRICUL-
ture sciences have been disparaged in the science and education communities, perhaps because
agronomy, soil science, plant pathology, and animal science use a problem-solving approach
rather than simply seeking knowledge.
When science research funds are handed outfor example, in the federal stimulus bill
agriculture often gets left off the list. I suspect this is because policy-makers and some scientists
see agriculture as synonymous with agribusiness, rather than as a purely scientific disci- responsibility, lets keep in mind that agricul-
pline, and they assume private funding will take care of agriculture-related research
needs. Agricultural scientists at land-grant institutions do receive some research
dollars from noncompetitive sources, but not all research is funded this way.
Adding insult to injury, the major U.S. science journals dont devote spe-
cific sections or editors to agricultural research. Some schools of agricul-
ture have taken the word agriculture out of their names, presumably to
attract more students in a country where only 2% of the population farms.
(It hasnt worked: Enrollment in university agricultural science majors
has dropped steadily nationwide since the early 1980s.)
In short, agricultural science has an image problem. Our disciplines
are not considered relevant and, more disturbing, were not seen as a
source of solutions to many of the worlds most pressing challenges, even
though many of those challenges directly relate to agricultural science.
Thats unfortunate, particularly in a world where people are starving
or eating unsafe food, where climate change will affect every aspect of
21st-century life, and where new kinds of sustainable fuel are needed.
The urgency of these global issuesall of them related to the agricultural
sciencesamplifies the need for an applied-science approach.
Agricultural scientists can do amazing things when they combine their
expertise and have access to the resources they need. Recently, scientists at an
international conference in Mexico announced that they have found a wheat vari-
ety that is resistant to Ug99a strain of stem rust that could affect up to 90% of the
worlds wheat (1). Although the scientists have not completely eliminated the threat, its
clearly a breakthrough with enormous implications.
Other recent signs also point to a renewed interest in and respect for agriculture. When the
first lady plants a vegetable garden on the White House lawn for the first time in half a century,
whether agricultural scientists are what we
call the people who ensure a safe and plentiful
food supply, clean water, and healthy soil?
Maybe not, as long as this critical work is
funded and accomplished. But as we move
into a new era of shared accountability and
tural sciences affect us all, and when agricul-
tural science is thriving, our communities
likely are thriving, too. ALLEN S. LEVINE
College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource
Sciences, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108
6074, USA, and Minnesota Obesity Center, Minneapolis VA
Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN 55417, USA. E-mail:
aslevine@umn.edu
Reference
1. J. Vidal, Stem rust fungus threatens global
wheat harvest, Guardian (19 March 2009);
www.guardian.co.uk/ environment/2009/mar/19/
rust-fungus-global-wheat-crops.
Schools Anxiously Await
NRC Program Rankings
FACULTY MEMBERS AT U.S. INSTITUTIONS
usually have mixed feelings about U.S. News
and World Reports graduate school rank-
ings. On one hand, we often criticize its one
size fits all approach and the importance
assigned to different categories. On the
other hand, we are keenly aware that the
ranking of our school can affect our ability
to recruit top graduate students and even
CREDIT: DAVID HANSEN/UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

shes sending a strong message: Food is important. Books about eating a sustainable, healthy faculty. It was thus exciting to hear, in mid-
diet top our best-seller lists. The National Gardening Association expects a 19% jump in the 2006, that the National Research Council
number of people growing at least some of their own food this year. Clearly, a growing number (NRC) decided to perform its own evalua-
of Americans are interested in where their food comes from, even on a small scale. tion of graduate programs, the first in more
The 2008 Farm Bill creates the National Institute for Food and Agriculture, which will be than a decade (1).
headed by a distinguished scientist directly appointed by the president. A small thing, perhaps, In January 2007, I and thousands of my col-
but it elevates agriculture to a level of prominence along the lines of health and other sciences. leagues completed a lengthy questionnaire
The farm bill also increases funding for competitive grants in both basic and applied agricul- sent by the NRC. Given that U.S. News pub-
tural research, which will provide opportunities for advanced study. lishes these rankings on an annual basis, the
Enrollment is up 16% since 2005 among college students in the professional associations anticipated NRC release date of December
that specialize in soil and crop sciences and agronomy, which suggests that todays students 2007 seemed achievable.

1140 29 MAY 2009 VOL 324 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

Published by AAAS
 Elucidating microbial
consortia
1150
Unfortunately, it was not. The release has
been postponed again and again, for more
than a year. Currently, they do not specify
even a tentative release date. Time is an
issue, because the rankings are based on
attributes that may change over a period of a
few years, including funding and publica-
tions. The longer the delay between data col-
lection and release of results, the less rele-
vant they become.
The students applying to graduate schools
are most affected by this delay. Unfortu-
nately, like fellow students from past years,
they will not be able to use the new rankings
to choose a school.
ZIV BAR-JOSEPH
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. E-mail: zivbj@cs.cmu.edu
Reference
1. Research Doctorate Programs, Board on Higher
Education and Workforce, Assessment of Research
Doctorate Programs (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/
pga/Resdoc/index.htm).
Response
WE ARE IN TOTAL AGREEMENT WITH BAR-
Joseph in our concern over the length of time
that this study has consumed.
The principal product of the study will
be the release of a great deal of data cover-
ing graduate education in the United States,
much of it gathered for the first time, which
will be of use to prospective students, the
faculty in these programs, and the leader-
ship of institutions of higher education
throughout the United States. The data were
collected from 93,626 individual faculty
members, 222 institutional coordinators
providing information about 5009 pro-
grams, and many independent private and
public sources of information. We are
extraordinarily grateful to the participating
institutions for the care, time, and work that
they have put into this project!
Because data verification is of the utmost
importance in a study of this nature, we have
taken extraordinary pains to check and to
recheck the input information for accuracy
and uniformity. An ever-relevant question
has been Did all respondents to a given
query address the identical issue? External
checks for consistency and accuracy were
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE
Symbiosis and
calcification in corals
1153
made by NRC staff, data were returned to the
surveyed institutions several times for verifi-
cation and correction (with changes recorded
for over 400 programs), and queries to inde-
pendent sources were checked repeatedly. It
is of the greatest importance that the differ-
ences that we report between different pro-
grams be real and not based on either error
Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 30, 2011
or misunderstandings. Although the results
will never be free of error, we believe that we
are now at the end of this process.
The section of the report in which we
outline our methodology has been submit-
ted to the rigorous review process of the
NRC and should soon be available to inter-
ested readers. The release of the full report,
with the complete set of data for university
graduate programs, should follow not too
long thereafter and will be made available to
faculty and students well before the begin-
ning of the next academic year. We fully
concur that the reported data and analysis
should be as current as possible and hope
that, working together with the participating
universities, a mechanism can be developed
to provide updates to the report on a timely
and prompt basis.
JEREMIAH P. OSTRIKER1* AND CHARLOTTE KUH2
1Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton Uni-
versity, Princeton, NJ 085441001, USA. 2National Acad-
emy of Sciences, Washington, DC 20001, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
ostriker@princeton.edu
Note
1. J.P.O. is the committee chair for the study. C.K. is the
study director.
White Wolves Can
Stand the Heat
T. M. ANDERSON ET AL. REPORT THAT WOLVES
of the northwestern forest in North America
are dark in comparison to the wolves of
the tundra (Molecular and evolutionary
history of melanism in North American gray
wolves, Reports, 6 March, p. 1339). Anderson
et al. suggest in passing that the dark coats
might better hide preying wolves in the
forest. An alternative adaptive explanation
is that in the summer, a black tundra wolf
could overheat.
VOL 324 29 MAY 2009
Published by AAAS
 LETTERS

A study by Finch and Western provides
evidence of the temperature-related conse-
quences of coat color among pastoralists
cattle in Kenya (1). Finch and Western
showed experimentally that black Boran
Zebu cattle in the sun became hotter than
did white cattle and that across Kenya, as
heat stress increased, the proportion of dark
cattle in herds decreased. They also found
that herders report more dark than light cat-
tle dying during droughts at low altitude.
Finch and Western related the variation in
color to the social system of the Kenyan
herders. Some of them divide themselves
into clans according to the preferred color
of their cattle, and the preference correlates
adaptively with the usual heat stress of the
clans home ranges.
ALEXANDER H. HARCOURT
Department of Anthropology, Graduate Group in Ecology,
University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. E-mail:
ahharcourt@ucdavis.edu
Reference
1. V. A. Finch, D. Western, Ecology 58, 1384 (1977).

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

Perspectives: Tipping pointedly colder by L. R. Kump (27 February, p. 1175). In the figure caption, the cooling trajectory
was mistakenly referred to as red (it is blue) and the warming trajectory as blue (it is red). In the third paragraph, references

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on August 30, 2011

4 and 5 were reversed (reference 4 is to Lear et al., 2008; reference 5 is to Katz et al.), and in the fifth paragraph, the ref-
erence to Lear et al. (5) should be to reference 3 (Lear et al., 2000). In the ninth paragraph, the citation to references (24)
should be to references (25).
Perspectives: Harvesting ocean wave energy by J. Scruggs and P. Jacob (27 February, p. 1176). For panel A of the fig-
ure, the photo credit should have read Copyright 2007 New York Times Graphics and the caption should have read
Schematic of a direct-drive point absorber developed at Oregon State University. The rated power of the Ocean Power
Technologies array in Oregon is 1.5 MW, rather than 2.0 MW, and the company name for the AWS point absorber is
Teamwork Technology BV.
Reports: Spending money on others promotes happiness by E. W. Dunn et al. (21 March 2008, p. 1687). We recently
identified a bug in the statistical package SPSS 14.0 that we used to analyze our data. The bug causes the first line of data
to overwrite the sixth line of data (see www.is.stir.ac.uk/itsupport/software/SPSS.php). This bug affected the data set for our
longitudinal study (N = 16). Primarily because this error decreased the variance in our data set, correcting this error alters
the critical statistical test such that the effect of prosocial spending on happiness is reduced from the originally reported
effect of b = 0.81, P < 0.02 to b = 0.55, P < 0.115 (which falls within the 95% confidence interval for the original para-
meter estimate). The corrected data set is available from the first authors Web site. The other three studies reported in our
paper were unaffected by this bug.
Reports: Adaptive plasticity in female mate choice dampens sexual selection on male ornaments in the lark bunting by A. S.
Chaine and B. E. Lyon (25 January 2008, p. 459). In the lower right of Fig. 4, N = 384, not 87. The statistics reported are correct.

TECHNICAL COMMENT ABSTRACTS

COMMENT ON A Large Excess in Apparent Solar Oblateness Due to Surface

Magnetism
J. R. Kuhn, M. Emilio, R. Bush
Fivian et al. (Reports, 24 October 2008, p. 560) analyzed data from the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar
Spectroscopic Imager satellite and reported that the Sun is more oblate than previous measurements have sug-
gested. We argue that their threshold-based analysis yields a biased measure of the solar limb shape geometry.
Full text at www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/324/5931/1143-b

RESPONSE TO COMMENT ON A Large Excess in Apparent Solar Oblateness Due to

Surface Magnetism
M. D. Fivian, H. S. Hudson, R. P. Lin, H. J. Zahid
Our analysis of satellite data from the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Spectroscopic Imager revealed a strong correla-
tion with a magnetic proxy, leading to an anomalous increase of the solar oblateness. We modeled this effect to yield
an oblateness measurement of an assumed underlying nonmagnetic Sun. Kuhn et al. note that this measurement
could be confused with a systematic spatial brightness variation. The existing data on this are ambiguous.
Full text at www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/324/5931/1143-c

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www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 324 29 MAY 2009

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