The helper’s high: How being nice can make you happy

Being nice is good for your health. That’s the conclusion of a study that found behavioral kindness has beneficial psychological effects not only for recipients, but also for those who put it into practice. A compliment, a smile or a casual chat can act as a social lubricant while also keeping the engine of happiness chugging along.

“These are acts that can be carried out that don’t involve great effort or sacrifice,” says Olga Bialobrzeska, lead author of the study, which was carried out by the SWPS University in Warsaw (Poland), in an email exchange. “It’s a casual niceness, that has no cost. Simple everyday gestures like having a friendly chat with the neighbor, being nice to a shop assistant or asking a co-worker how they are doing.”

In recent years, scientific literature has analyzed the effects of so-called random acts of niceness. This encompasses very different behaviors, from greeting someone to donating a generous sum to an NGO. In this study, the aim was to analyze casual niceness, which is related more to warmth than to morality. In other words, it’s less about being a good person than appearing to be. The murderer, loved by his neighbors, who “always said hello” could fit this definition.

“In each of our interactions, whether with acquaintances, strangers or family members, we can choose to be friendly, neutral, or unfriendly,” Bialobrzeska explains. “Our research shows that when you do the former, you tend to feel better, and be in a better mood.” To prove this, during the study, researchers asked participants to perform acts of kindness. After performing several acts of niceness, many of them did this naturally, showing that once a person overcome their initial reluctance, these behaviors can become everyday practice. When it comes to being nice, the maxim is fake it until you make it.

Emotional effort

Being nice can be good, but false nicety is harmful, according to the researchers. “The feigned niceness that we exercise towards a person to whom we feel aversion can harm our own health,” explains Bialobrzeska. “We have not analyzed it in this study, but there is previous scientific literature. A study analyzed the state of mind of telemarketers who have to be friendly all day, even to customers who are not friendly to them. Most of them claimed to end the day exhausted by the emotional effort.”

This is the third study on niceness carried out by Bialobrzeska’s team. They have also done a research at the beginning of the pandemic, when social life largely moved online. Bialobrzeska, however, believes that, in matters of niceness, there are no great differences between the virtual and real world. That’s why, she explains, it’s especially important to be kind online. “Now, with social polarization a growing problem in many countries, fueled by social media, it is essential to educate people on how to express their opinions, points of view, criticism or disagreement in a pleasant and respectful way. Otherwise, we are going to face a further rise in polarization and hate speech.”

Niceness has not only been studied from a psychological point of view, but also from a hormonal one, with good deeds reduced to a matter of chemistry. Most of the research has focused on oxytocin, a hormone involved in forming social bonds and trust. This hormone would explain why being kind makes us feel better, although in some cases, it also involves the release of dopamine, a chemical messenger that can trigger a feeling of euphoria. This is known as the helper’s high. Studies show that volunteering or donating money (or even just thinking about it) activates the part of the brain that is normally stimulated by pleasures such as food and sex. Being a good person, sometimes, is a matter of selfishness.

Gillian Sandstrom was a young university student in England in the 1990s. One morning, she had a flat tire on her bike, and since she had no money for a taxi, she was forced to drag it a few miles, to the nearest garage. Along the way, a college classmate, a slightly older girl she barely knew, saw her, stopped her car, and offered to drive her to the garage. “It happened 30 years ago,” recalls Sandstrom, who has become one of the foremost experts in the science of kindness. “But I haven’t forgotten. The fact that he took the time to do that for me left a deep mark on me.”

Are women kinder?

Sandstrom is a professor of psychology at the University of Sussex. She was the architect of The Kindness Test, the largest study on kindness ever conducted. More than 60,000 people participated in a project that served as the basis for a series of BBC reports. The results, in line with those of Bialobrzeska, suggest that kinder people tend to experience higher levels of well-being and life satisfaction. It found other striking data: two thirds of those surveyed think that the pandemic has made people kinder; nearly 60% of participants reported having received an act of kindness in the previous 24 hours, and women are more likely to perceive and perform acts of kindness.

“It’s a sensitive issue that doesn’t have a simple answer,” reflects Bialobrzeska when asked about whether there is a kindness gender gap. It may be that women tend to perceive kindness and express it more easily “because traditionally, women have been more expected to be nice than men,” she adds. But this social norm has its dark side, she warns. “A woman educated to always be friendly and smiling may be hiding her anger and frustration. And this may mean she does not address her needs when they conflict with those of others.”

Intellectuals such as Barbara Ehrenreich have explored this idea further. In her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, she warned kindness can be used as a coercive tool. More recently, Sara Ahmed, the author of The Promise of Happiness, wrote a handbook on the “feminist killjoy.” She argues that when feminist, anti-racist and LGBTQI+ struggles are made public, they disrupt the collective well-being and that smiling and kindness serve to delegitimize anger and criticism. In this sense, Bialobrzeska believes that being kind is not at odds with being firm. “You don’t have to give up your opinions or your assertiveness, you can practice the ability to do it kindly,” she says.

Sandstrom agrees, adding that, in any case, “the factor that best predicts how nice you are to others [and how nice they are to you] is not your gender, but your personality.” Participants who were more outgoing, open, and likeable reported giving and receiving more kindness. This conclusion makes sense, since the biggest challenge for the participants in performing acts of kindness was embarrassment and the fear that their actions would be misinterpreted. Being an outgoing person can help you to be kinder and, in the long run, to be happier.

But Sandstrom says that these are skills that can be learned. While she considers herself an “extraordinarily introverted” person, she says she talks with a stranger on the subway almost every day — experiences that she describes on social media. Drawing on her experience, she encourages people to smile and be kind. And if we look at the data, that’s exactly what pretty much everyone is doing. According to a 2019 study by Goldsmiths University of London, 98% of citizens consider themselves to be kinder than the national average. We are nice beyond our means. And beyond what is mathematically possible.

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