Further Explorations in Kindness

With Dr Lee Rowland: Where do we go from here?

In our first post, “Does Kindness Create Happiness?”, we revealed evidence showing that being kind can have a positive effect on your happiness and wellbeing. Our next post, “Why Are We Kind?”, discussed the science behind our everyday acts of human kindness.

During the course of our research we read hundreds of interesting papers relating to kindness. What we discovered will help frame our next phase of scientific exploration as we work to illuminate kindness and create a kinder future together.

Here we discuss some of the other interesting questions and ideas that emerged during our kindness research.

Do kind acts benefit the recipient?

We know that performing kind acts can have a positive effect on “the actor” (the person performing the act). But does the person on the receiving end of an act of kindness also benefit from these good deeds? Surprisingly, the results have been mixed, and only a small amount of research addresses this question.

One line of inquiry has investigated whether kinder caregivers boost the wellbeing of their patients. The evidence seems to suggest that they do. One interesting study showed that kinder doctors might reduce the duration and severity of the common cold in their patients (Rakel et al., 2009). That’s an astonishing finding which needs to be replicated and given closer scrutiny before drawing too many conclusions. It certainly is an area of research worth pursuing.

One notable study reported that both givers and receivers of random ‘pay it forward’ acts of kindness benefited through increased well-being (Pressman et al., 2015). However, we also reviewed a study that found that people can often react negatively and suspiciously to random acts of kindness, such as handing out flowers to passersby (Baskerville et al., 2000).

Do acts of kindness performed by either a friend or a stranger have different effects on wellbeing and happiness? It may be that we expect kindness from friends, and that the surprise of being treated with kindness by a stranger leads to greater elevations in mood. These possibilities need to be tested empirically.

Can we meditate our way to kindness and wellbeing?

One area of kindness research that has received a lot of attention is loving-kindness meditation (LKM). In this practice, one directs compassion and wishes for well-being toward real or imagined others. LKM is designed to create changes in emotion, motivation, and behavior in order to promote positive feelings and kindness toward the self and others (Hutcherson, Seppala, & Gross, 2008). Various LKM studies have demonstrated a positive effect of these interventions on health, wellbeing and social connectedness. Even a brief seven-minute meditation exercise has been shown to improve mood and feelings of connection to others. These results are tantalizing, but many questions still remain around the extent and longevity of these effects.

Can we create communities of kindness?

A justifiable critique of laboratory research is that it lacks ecological validity. In other words, lab studies get people to do things they wouldn’t normally do, in ways they wouldn’t normally do them. Although a positive effect of kindness has been demonstrated in the lab, could the benefits of kindness be more pronounced in the everyday environments where we live and work? The majority of kindness research has been lab based, so we need more studies and field experiments out there in the ‘real world’, so that we can extend the lab findings to less artificial scenarios.

We were intrigued by one research group that used a community participatory process of ‘design thinking’ to understand and innovate around the issue of homelessness in a local community in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Kore et al. 2016). By engaging in dialogue with community residents, businesses and government members, and explicitly drawing out their ideas of the causes and solutions to homelessness in the community, the group was able to innovate design solutions. This included a ‘community kindness wall’ — where people leave belongings at a painted wall where others are invited to take them.

The charity organization Camerados has established several new and innovative community spaces called Living Rooms. At these sites people (who may be experiencing social isolation) congregate and work together to build micro-communities of mutual support and social interaction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that volunteers engaged in these projects experience a sense of purpose, connection and wellbeing that had otherwise eluded them. Kindness.org and Dartington Social Research will be working with Camerados this year to determine how effective the Living Rooms are and to understand the factors that make them successful.

We are also interested in how volunteering may help create communities of kindness. There are examples of volunteering positively affecting wellbeing (Jenkinson, 2013) and health (Piliavin & Siegal, 2007). However, volunteering is considered to be an activity that gives people purpose, meaning, and social connection. So, while some people volunteer because they are kind, other people may volunteer because they are bored or lonely. Further research on the role of kindness in volunteer work would help untangle these factors.

Can kindness be found in the brain?

Several scientists have investigated the neurobiological link between kindness and positive responses in the human brain. An emerging understanding suggests that the same brain areas that support reward processing of concrete rewards such as food and drugs also elicit neural activity during charitable donations (e.g. Harbaugh et al. 2007). This is a developing path of research, and we suspect that in the not too distant future there will be a substantial body of literature to review. Further studies on how the brain processes kindness and controls kind acts would be invaluable for deepening our understanding of how to help people choose kindness.

The future of kindness

It is important that the body of research on kindness also consider the long-term consequences of acts of kindness. Research suggests that people might have a stable level of happiness that they return to despite whatever happens to them, be it good or bad (Ryan & Deci, 2001).

It is also important to explore whether we are looking for the effects of kindness on happiness in the wrong places or at the wrong times. Existing ways to measure the outcome of studies tend to rely on self-reports of happiness. Happiness is a quick hit, which rewards you now for doing things that have long-term benefits in the future. Rather than chasing the transitory immediate effects of happiness, developing or employing measures that assess those long-term benefits is important.

If the function of altruistic behavior is to help families, improve communities, make new friends, find a mate, or increase status, then studies should be measuring these outcomes. Do people allocated to the kindness condition report better relations with their families? More identification with their communities? More friends? More sexual partners? More committed relationships? More resilient marriages? More recognition and honours? More pride or satisfaction in one’s achievements? Future research would do well to address these questions, and build on existing explorations (Aknin et al., 2013).

There is still a long way to go before the world truly understands exactly how kindness affects individuals and society, and the optimal conditions required to inspire kindness. When the scientific evidence provides that firmer footing, it may be possible to develop highly effective kindness interventions that substantially increase the number of people actively choosing to be kind — and as a result, improve the happiness, wellbeing and mental health of human beings.

Here at kindness.org we believe that the more kind people there are, the better our planet and the species that we share it with will thrive.

References:

Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W., Sandstrom, G. M., & Norton, M. I. (2013). Does social connection turn good deeds into good feelings?: On the value of putting the ‘social’ in prosocial spending. International Journal of Happiness and Development, 1(2), 155–171.

Baskerville, K., Johnson, K., Monk-Turner, E., Slone, Q., Standley, H., Stansbury, S., … & Young, J. (2000). Reactions to random acts of kindness. The Social Science Journal, 37(2), 293–298.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). Self‐determination. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hutcherson, C. A., Seppala, E. M., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion, 8(5), 720.

Jenkinson, C. E., Dickens, A. P., Jones, K., Thompson-Coon, J., Taylor, R. S., Rogers, M., … & Richards, S. H. (2013). Is volunteering a public health intervention? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the health and survival of volunteers. BMC public health, 13(1), 773.

Kore, K., Garcia, H., Beardslee, T., Hess, J., Saghaiepour, C., & Steenwyk, M. (2016). Community Kindness Walls: Responding to Issues of Homelessness in Grand Rapids through Design Thinking.

Piliavin, J. A., & Siegl, E. (2007). Health benefits of volunteering in the Wisconsin longitudinal study. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 48, 450–464.

Pressman, S. D., Kraft, T. L., & Cross, M. P. (2015). It’s good to do good and receive good: The impact of a ‘pay it forward’ style kindness intervention on giver and receiver well-being. Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(4), 293–302.

Rakel, D. P., Hoeft, T. J., Barrett, B. P., Chewning, B. A., Craig, B. M., & Niu, M. (2009). Practitioner empathy and the duration of the common cold. Family medicine, 41(7), 494.