{"id":2351,"date":"2014-09-25T10:57:26","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T02:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/wp\/2024\/10\/29\/kindness-makes-you-happy-and-happiness-makes-you-kind\/"},"modified":"2014-09-25T10:57:26","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T02:57:26","slug":"kindness-makes-you-happy-and-happiness-makes-you-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/25\/kindness-makes-you-happy-and-happiness-makes-you-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"Kindness makes you happy… and happiness makes you kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alex Dixon<\/strong><\/p>\n

This essay originally appeared on <\/em>Greater Good<\/span><\/span><\/a>, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be great if you could walk into a store and buy lifelong happiness? The idea\u2019s not as fanciful as it sounds\u2014as long as whatever you buy is meant for someone else.<\/p>\n

Two recent studies suggest that giving to others makes us happy, even happier than spending on ourselves. What\u2019s more, our kindness might create a virtuous cycle that promotes lasting happiness and altruism.<\/p>\n

\"GiftIn one of the studies, published in the Journal of Social Psychology<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/em>, researchers in Great Britain had participants take a survey measuring life satisfaction, then they assigned all 86 participants to one of three groups. One group was instructed to perform a daily act of kindness for the next 10 days. Another group was also told to do something new each day over those 10 days. A third group received no instructions.<\/p>\n

After the 10 days were up, the researchers asked the participants to complete the life satisfaction survey again.<\/p>\n

The groups that practiced kindness and engaged in novel acts both experienced a significant\u2014and roughly equal\u2014boost in happiness; the third group didn\u2019t get any happier. The findings suggest that good deeds do in fact make people feel good\u2014even when performed over as little as 10 days\u2014and there may be particular benefits to varying our acts of kindness, as novelty seems linked to happiness as well.<\/p>\n

But kindness may have a longer, even more profound effect on our happiness, according to the second study, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/em> and conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School and the University of British Columbia.<\/p>\n

In this study, the researchers instructed roughly half of the 51 participants to recall, as vividly as they could, the last time they spent $20 or $100 on themselves. The other participants had to recall the last time they spent the same amounts on someone else. All the participants also completed a scale that measured how happy they were.<\/p>\n

Researchers then gave the participants small sums of money and two basic choices: They could spend it on themselves (by covering a bill, another expense, or a gift for themselves) or on someone else (through a donation to charity or a gift). Choose whatever will make you happiest, the researchers told them, adding that their choice would remain anonymous, just in case they felt pressure to appear more altruistic.<\/p>\n

The researchers made two big findings. First, consistent with the British study, people in general felt happier when they were asked to remember a time they bought something for someone else\u2014even happier than when they remembered buying something for themselves. This happiness boost was the same regardless of whether the spending was $20 or $100.<\/p>\n

But the second finding is even more provocative: The happier participants felt about their past generosity, the more likely they were in the present to choose to spend on someone else instead of themselves. Not all participants who remembered their past kindness felt happy. But the ones who did were overwhelmingly more likely to double down on altruism.<\/p>\n

The results suggest a kind of \u201cpositive feedback loop\u201d between kindness and happiness, according to the authors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe practical implications of this positive feedback loop could be that engaging in one kind deed (e.g., taking your mom to lunch) would make you happier, and the happier you feel, the more likely you are to do another kind act,\u201d says Lara Aknin, the study\u2019s lead author. \u201cThis might also be harnessed by charitable organizations: Reminding donors of earlier donations could make them happy, and experiencing happiness might lead to making a generous gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Dixon<\/strong> is a Greater Good editorial assistant.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alex Dixon This essay originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Wouldn\u2019t it be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klinikong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}