Let’s Add Kindness to Science

I have a crazy proposal to improve our science.

Let’s introduce kindness whenever and wherever we can.

I don’t mean substituting kindness for critical evaluation of methodology, statistics, and theory. If we are going to grow and improve our science, we have to be able to point out flaws. And we have to be able to deal with having our flaws pointed out.

But honestly, I feel like we are kind of all over the first half of that — the “pointing out flaws” part. Negative feedback is constant in our jobs. Constant. We give negative feedback to one another when we ask colleagues to read our drafts of grant proposals and manuscripts and to help us with talks. We get it from anonymous reviewers and editors. We get it after we publish, from people who don’t agree with what we said or how we did our science.

I can’t think of any truer statement about academic life than that it is a shit-storm of negative feedback.

Yes, we aren’t always that great at taking negative feedback (and not taking it personally). And that isn’t helpful to growing as a field.

But maybe that is because we so rarely give and get positive feedback to cushion the blow. Maybe it is so hard to take the constant barrage of negative comments because we so very rarely say the positive out loud. The honest to God truth is that if you aren’t in the 1% of the field who gets the Early, Mid, and Late awards then you are rarely being told much good about your work.

It is no wonder that it so demoralizing and so hard to hear the bad. It is usually all we hear.

A few years back, Dr. Kathleen Vohs (of the Carlson School of Business), emailed me to tell me how much she liked one of my papers. I was floored. After I thanked her, she told me that since we all get so much negative all the time, she tries to reach out to tell a researcher when she likes a paper. I couldn’t believe how her small act made me feel so good. And I couldn’t believe that I never thought of doing it myself.

So I started doing it (although not enough). Recently I reached out to a senior person in our field who has been publishing for 30 years (and has made a huge impact) to tell her I liked a review paper she wrote. And she told me that in her entire career no one had ever written to her to tell her that they liked a paper. No one. Ever.

I am sorry, but that is batshit crazy. We all read papers that we like all the time. What is wrong with our science that we never take a brief moment to reach out to people to tell them something nice?

So I am proposing that we do something radical and different and try to also encourage one another. Do you think someone ran a cool study? Email them and let them know. Did someone’s theory really inspire you? Post something on social media about it and tag them. Did you really enjoy a paper? Let the author know.

Maybe, just maybe, the necessary criticism and reformulating of our science will be less hard and less aversive when it is matched with more regular encouragement, kindness, and positivity.

Give it a try. At the very least, you will make someone’s day.

At best, you will improve our science.