Why Acts Of Kindness Make Us Happy
You might not think it as you wander London’s grey streets this gloomy Tuesday, but today is actually International Day of Happiness. So instead of dipping your head on your journey home, why not make eye contact with a fellow city dweller and – well – just smile. It’s little acts like this that can make someone’s day, and in turn your own. Smiles are infectious, so if you start the whole thing off, by this evening our fair capital could be full of grins from Hillingdon to Hackney.
Last month the students of Carmel High School in the United States elected to write kind notes to their classmates and tape them on the students’ lockers. All 5,100 of them.
Notes included messages, such as ‘You are loved’ and ‘The greatest views are after the hardest climbs. Don’t give up!’ Both the writers of these notes and the recipients reported that it was ‘heartwarming’ to see these messages around the school.
While seeing other people’s suffering can be emotionally painful, practicing kindness toward others can improve both our mood and the mood of the person to whom we are kind. Simply put – a kind act creates happiness. We spoke to Dr Janina Scarlet, a clinical psychologist and author to find out why…
Dr Scarlet says: “The answer is empathy. Empathy refers to ‘putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes. It means being able to imagine what the other person might be feeling in a given circumstance. Our brains are actually wired for empathy and wired for kindness. Mirror neurons, particular nerve cells in our brain, create a similar neurological response in our brain when we observe someone else have a particular experience as when we ourselves experience it directly. For example, when someone we care about learns about a death of a loved one, the news can be devastating to us as well. Similarly, thanks to the mirror neurons, seeing someone else receive the kindness they need in a difficult moment, can be heartwarming to us as too. In addition, when performing acts of kindness toward ourselves or others, our bodies release certain ‘feel good’ chemicals, such as dopamine and oxytocin. Oxytocin is the hormone related to love, trust, and bonding while dopamine is related to our basic reward system. This means that our body actually rewards us for being kind.
“Engaging in kind acts can actually lead to positive physiological and psychological changes. Specifically, kind and compassionate actions have been shown through research to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and increase happiness. One of the possible reasons for this finding is that when we are struggling (physically or emotionally), we ultimately need comfort and soothing. Practicing kindness toward others can, at least in some instances, create a similar feeling of emotional soothing as directly receiving comfort ourselves. However, because of our mirror neurons, seeing the joy on the face of the recipient of kindness can subsequently elicit joy in us as well.
“In addition to positive psychological changes, kind acts can also lead to positive physiological changes. Specifically, practicing compassion and kindness toward others can lead to temporary reduction in inflammation. Inflammation is involved in illnesses such as lupus, arthritis, Crohn’s disease, migraines, as well as many other types of illnesses, including cancer. This means that engaging in kind acts can potentially reduce some of the symptoms of inflammatory illnesses, at least in short term.
“Overall, the physiological and psychological benefits of acts of kindness make it clear that the more kind we are to others, the stronger and better we are likely to feel. Hence, kindness is a kind of superpower, one you already have, one you can use anytime you like, a superpower, which can truly help you and others.”
So, go on, try it. The world needs you for its happiness. You matter and you make a difference!
- Dr Scarlet’s new book – Therapy Quest – is a revolutionary self-help book which combines therapy with an interactive fantasy quest
References: Kearney, D. J., Malte, C. A., McManus, C., Martinez, M. E., Felleman, B., & Simpson, T. L. (2013). Loving-Kindness Meditation for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Pilot Study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 26(4), 426-434.
Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Lamm, C., & Singer, T. (2012). Functional neural plasticity and associated changes in positive affect after compassion training. Cerebral Cortex, 23(7), 1552-1561.
Stellar, J. E., John-Henderson, N., Anderson, C. L., Gordon, A. M., McNeil, G. D., & Keltner, D. (2015). Positive affect and markers of inflammation: Discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines. Emotion, 15(2), 129-133.
