According to Psychologists, It's the Little Things that Make the World Better
Small acts of kindness and connection create an upward spiral that spans the globe
Hiya!
In just a few short decades, we’ve gone from living in a relatively stable, even mundane, period of history to one marked by growing instability and chaotic transition. Rapid technological advancements, cultural and political upheaval, and worsening climate change make it challenging not to live in a constant state of anxiety and fear.
It’s easy to feel like nothing is in our control and that being a kind person is pointless when the world feels cruel, with more metaphorical and literal storms on the horizon. The idea that a small act of kindness can make a positive global difference seems naive at best. Yet, research shows there’s a reason the phrase “it’s the little things that matter” exists.
Personal Benefits
Part of being human is navigating opposing instincts and emotions, which requires self-awareness and critical thinking. Otherwise, we become puppets for our impulses. For instance, when life gets scary, our instinct is to hunker down, run, or fight, which can cause us to isolate and distrust others.
However, in the same scenario, we also need human connection, trust, and support. And while it may go against our initial instincts, research shows kind acts, both large and small, benefit you, your relationships, and society at large.
Studies repeatedly show that prosocial behavior — aka being nice — toward ourselves, our friends and family, and even strangers increases our self-confidence and sense of well-being while also providing a sense of meaning in life. Even observing or recalling a kind act benefits our personal well-being.
In addition to the emotional and mental benefits, research suggests helping others benefits our physical health, too. A 2014 study tracked over 7,000 adults in The United States who were 51 years and older and discovered that those who volunteered were “more likely to use preventive health care services,” and “spent fewer nights in the hospital.” A 2016 study found that older adults who spent money on others had lower blood pressure than those who spent it on themselves.
Meanwhile, yet another study involving participants with diverse ethnicities between 23 and 93 years old found that the genes of those who performed kind acts showed improvements linked to a healthier immune profile.
Considering these and more supporting research provides ample evidence that helping others and being kind benefits us personally, arguably as much as the person(s) we’re aiding. So, even if it feels like nothing we do matters, do it anyway. Do it for yourself.
That said, not all acts of kindness are created equal. For one thing, reaping the personal benefits involves a couple of contingencies — we have to choose to do them rather than being required to, and we need to feel like our efforts have a positive impact.
The other thing is that the personal perks of generosity require direct engagement with others, which can feel intimidating for some, but doing so results in another layer of advantages.
Relationship Benefits
It turns out that we experience more personal benefits when bestowing our kindness directly to a person or proxy than from a distance. For example, we can donate face-to-face rather than online or take a friend out for a meal rather than sending them a gift card. Plus, doing so elevates us into another realm of benefits kindness offers: building and strengthening our relationships.
Lara Aknin, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and director of the university’s Helping and Happiness Lab — explained to Zara Abrams of the American Psychological Association:
“When people give in ways that are more socially connected or relational, that seems to better unlock [our] emotional rewards.”
Helping other people provides an opportunity for social connectedness that deepens the benefits we feel on our own and extends them beyond us. Psychologists theorize that a mental state called cognitive dissonance is behind why small, interpersonal acts of kindness ripple into having a larger-scale impact.
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort we feel when things don’t align with our preconceived beliefs, so we attempt to understand the disconnect. Liza M. Hinchey, a psychologist and human connection researcher at Wayne State University, offers a great example of how this mental state can encourage us to overcome our differences when she wrote in The Conversation:
“[I]magine two people who like each other. One believes that fighting climate change is crucial, and the other believes that climate change is a political ruse. Cognitive dissonance occurs: They like each other, but they disagree. People crave cognitive balance, so the more these two like each other, the more motivated they will be to hear each other out.”
Hinchey goes on to say that the more we strengthen our relationships through acts of connection, the more likely we are to empathize with another individual’s perspective. Collectively, these efforts can increase compassion and understanding while strengthening communities, making us feel less alone.
Things like oppression and war can feel abstract and overwhelming, but they become more real when they are connected to someone you know or care about. And it’s this desire or curiosity to understand why someone says, acts, or thinks the way they do that spreads the ripple effects of kindness even further.
Societal Benefits
You’re probably familiar with the concept that there are six degrees of separation between every person on Earth. If you aren’t, the idea is (and research supports) that trying to balance the costs and benefits of our social connections tends to form global social networks where everyone is approximately six steps (or relationships) away from everyone else.
In other words, we want to cultivate valuable connections with people but are restrained by the costs of maintaining relationships, such as time, distance, or energy levels. The equilibrium formed by this dynamic directly influences the makeup of our social circles or networks.
Every human has their own unique social network, or what psychologists call a “social ecology,” where individual acts of kindness are the beginning of a sort of domino effect. Studies show that compassion at any level of a person’s social ecology — personal, interpersonal, or structural — can affect every other level in what Hinchey describes as a “positive feedback loop” or “upward spiral.”
Take this 2018 study, for example. It focused on Romanian and Hungarian students — two ethnic groups with a history of tension — and found that those who claimed to have close friendships with people in the other group also showed improved attitudes towards the opposing group as a whole. Meanwhile, those who reported rocky relationships with people from the opposite group showed damaged attitudes towards the other ethnic group as a whole.
The study shows how the quality of a relationship has powerful potential to squash large-scale tensions by focusing on the shared humanity between us rather than on our differences.
A second example comes from another 2018 study analyzing the growing political divide in the United States. The researchers found that the participants who self-identified as Democrats or Republicans disliked people in the opposite group primarily because of negative assumptions about that group’s morals. In the study, they explain that:
“According to Moral Foundations Theory, liberals are more likely to endorse individualizing foundations, which focus on individuals’ rights through preventing harm towards others and promoting fairness, while conservatives tend to be more likely to endorse binding foundations, which are factors that bind groups together through respecting authority, loyalty to in-group members, and physical or spiritual purity.”
These moral differences may seem extreme in a sense, but at their core, respect (especially mutual respect), fairness, loyalty, and a desire to prevent harm to others are all admirable and positive attributes that benefit relationships.
So, maybe, as more people show each other — one helping hand or small act of kindness at a time — that they are reliable, loyal friends and community members who want to prevent harm to others, larger-scale social disagreements can be softened.
Perspective Shift
We spend an absurd amount of time searching for a specific, often overly complicated recipe to solve our problems. But in my quest to understand myself and our existence, I learned that our answers usually lie in what I call Life’s Simple Truths — monumental wisdom condensed to just a few words.
Hinchey’s research touches on one of them, which is “It’s the small things that matter most,” but others include: “Don’t judge a book by its cover;” “You are not your thoughts;” “Actions speak louder than words;” “This too shall pass;” “Change is the only constant,” and many more.
Simple truths are everywhere — self-help and religious slogans, viral therapy snippets, even marketing campaigns touch on them occasionally. We’ve all heard versions of them our whole lives but rarely pause to reflect on them. If anything, they’re dismissed outright as too simple to solve whatever complicated problem we have.
We forget that simple doesn’t mean easy.
It’s simple to say we can change the world by putting aside our preconceived judgments, leaving our comfort zones to befriend strangers, or entering a foreign-to-us social environment, but that doesn’t make it easy.
That said, I think it’s worth the effort.
This is my free newsletter, Curious Adventure. If you want more, consider subscribing to Curious Life — which you receive sneak peeks of every Monday morning, which explores a diverse range of topics and further explores this Curious Adventure we call Life.
These articles require several hours, sometimes days, of research, writing, and editing before publication. The subscription fee helps me pay my bills so I can continue providing high-quality content and doing what I love — following my curiosities and sharing what I learn with you.
If you enjoy my work and want to show me support, you can donate to my PalPal. Thank you for reading. I appreciate you.
Excellent reminders, and profound wisdom. Thank you. You just made the world a little better.