A shared universe › Blog › Acts of kindness: why helping others is good for you too · Español
Helping someone else usually lifts the mood of the person who helps too, although the effect studies measure is modest and depends on how it is done. Doing something good for another person usually does the receiver good. What many studies show is that it also does good to the person who does it.
The psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky asked a group of students to carry out five kind acts a week for six weeks. Some did them all on the same day; others spread them over the week. As Lyubomirsky, Kennon Sheldon and David Schkade explain in their 2005 paper in the Review of General Psychology, the well-being of those who did nothing dipped slightly over those weeks, while that of the helpers rose. But the rise was only seen in those who packed their five acts into one day.
The acts were of all kinds: giving blood, helping a friend with a paper, visiting an elderly relative, writing a thank-you note to a former teacher. The authors think that, because many were small, spreading them out diluted them until they blended into everyday kindness. Bunched together, they stood out.
Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues Aknin and Norton published it in 2008 in the journal Science. They saw it in three ways: in a survey, people who spent more on others were happier; in a follow-up of people who received an unexpected sum of money, spending part of it on others went with greater happiness; and in an experiment, those given money with instructions to spend it on someone else said they felt happier than those told to spend it on themselves.
Years later, the same group and other colleagues found that this was not just a North American thing. In a 2013 study with data from 136 countries, spending on others was linked to greater happiness in poor and rich countries alike, and experiments in Canada, Uganda, India and South Africa pointed in the same direction.
It is wise not to exaggerate. A 2020 meta-analysis that brought together 201 studies with almost two hundred thousand people found that the link between helping and well-being is real but modest. It was stronger for the sense that life has meaning than for simple pleasure, and informal, everyday help was linked to more benefits than organised help.
In other words: helping does not fix a life, but it usually leaves something good behind, especially when it comes from within and not from obligation.
If you want to try what Lyubomirsky found, you could pick one day of the week and keep it for your five kind acts.
There is no need to do great things or to tell anyone. A small gesture, made with care, already counts.
Sometimes the gesture is not even for someone you know. Why a few words from someone who does not know you can help so much is explained in the kindness of a stranger.
Helping feels good when it is chosen. If you have been caring for someone for a long time and feel you have no strength left, that does not mean you have stopped being a good person: it means you need looking after too. In that case, more acts of kindness towards others are not the answer; asking for support and resting is. There are some ideas for that in how to look after yourself when you care for a relative.
In A shared universe you can tap “Keep someone company” and leave a few words for someone who has lit a star. It takes you to the stars that have had the least company. It takes a second and, for the person who receives it, it can change the day.