The Psychology of Kindness
World Kindness Day is November 13th and it serves as a fun recognition day that brings acceptance, love, and kindness to the front of our minds. It is the perfect day for small acts of kindness towards friends, family, colleagues, or even complete strangers. World Kindness Day is a chance to bring joy to others and make the world a better place one simple act of kindness at a time.
World Kindness Day also marks an opportunity to learn more about the psychology of kindness. Positive attributes such as kindness did not originally get much research attention. For the first century of the field of Psychology in America’s existence, it was necessary to focus research efforts on understanding and treating mental illness. By the turn of the century, however, attention started shifting towards research on strengths and virtues associated with happier people and communities. This area of psychology that focusses on developing and nurturing strengths in the interest of improving well-being is called Positive Psychology and was founded by Dr. Martin Seligman.
When psychologists research any topic, we must start by precisely defining the topic we are studying. A concise definition of kindness is being nice to others. Human behavior is complex though and psychologists have found that there are additional topics related to the psychology of kindness. For example, kindness also involves being generous with others. How we are generous depends on the situation, but it often involves giving of our time, money, or special abilities to those experiencing some sort of hardship.
The psychology of kindness also includes studying and understanding the concept of altruism, which is human behavior intended solely for the benefit of others and not oneself. Research in positive psychology has found that people who engage in more acts of altruism experience higher levels of empathy, sympathy, moral reasoning, and feelings of social responsibility.
Another topic related to the psychology of kindness is being compassionate. Dr. Paul Gilbert, clinical psychologist, founder of Compassion Focused Therapy, and author of the book The compassionate mind: A new approach to life's challenges, defined compassion as “a deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.” When we experience compassion, it goes beyond the sentiment of caring about the well-being of others as we also experience motivation to alleviate the suffering. In addition to motivation and caring, compassion involves sensitivity, sympathy, empathy, distress tolerance, and non-judgment.
Psychologists have incorporated the concept of kindness into a variety of psychotherapy approaches. For example, with Compassion Focused Therapy, the therapist helps the client to view one’s struggles in a more compassionate manner as opposed to a focus on guilt and shame that many people maintain before starting therapy. Self-talk can be reframed from overly harsh and critical thoughts to those that are more helpful, compassionate, and kind. Practicing mindfulness is a core piece of Compassion Focused Therapy as it helps us with having a nonjudgmental stance.
Dr. Marsha Linehan, psychologist and founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), applied the concept of kindness in a way that can help therapy clients who are experiencing great distress and are at risk of engaging in unhealthy or unhelpful behaviors in an attempt to cope. In the Distress Tolerance module of DBT, therapy clients learn about a healthy coping skill called contributing. The contributing skill involves doing something nice for someone else.
How does doing something nice for someone else help when someone is in emotional distress? The contributing skill approach works by briefly taking our attention off our emotional pain and instead focusing our attention on the kind act we will do for someone else. The contributing skill is not meant to solve all of life’s problems, but it can be helpful to focus our attention on something or someone else until the intensity of our emotional pain decreases. We can contribute to others in a variety of ways such as sending a heartfelt card or surprising someone with a favorite treat. In addition to taking our attention off our own suffering, our mood may also improve if we get that warm and fuzzy feeling that often occurs after doing something nice for someone else.
Kindness is more common than it may seem, especially if we are forming opinions on the frequency of kindness by what we see on the television news or by scrolling our social media feeds. It is important to remember that much of what is reported in the news and posted on social media is done so with an emphasis on sensationalism. An unfortunate consequence of this tendency in the media is that we end up hearing way more about the bad than the good. Those feel-good stories sprinkled here and there really do happen more often than the media would lead us to think.
Dr. Jennifer McManus is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Florida who regularly integrates the concept of compassion into her work with psychotherapy clients. Learn more about her practice at www.drjennifermcmanus.com
