Doing Random Acts of Kindness Is Good for You

—Evorona—Getty Images I’m the kind of person who shares a genuine compliment often , telling someone who is standing behind me in the airport line that I love their sneakers or letting one of my daughter’s friends know they have a beautiful smile.

I also like to do nice things for people, like bringing the veterans that I work with doughnuts and coffee every Monday morning.

I learned to be kind from my grandfather who raised me.

He drove the nuns from my Catholic grammar school to their doctors’ appointments, and he shared smiles and jokes with grocery store clerks, neighborhood kids, and almost every soul whose path he crossed.

I wanted to follow in his footsteps and engage as often as I could in my own random acts of kindness .

I recognized that being kind and giving selflessly to others made me feel good as well, but it wasn’t until recently, 25 years into my career as a trauma psychologist, that I learned about the science behind random acts of kindness.

Research indicates that engaging in random acts of kindness boosts happiness in both those who give and those who receive.

A systematic review of 24 studies indicated that performing acts of kindness boosts the well-being of the giver.

One study on the effects of a seven-day intervention—in which people intentionally tried to do nice things for others—found that it didn’t matter if someone was giving to those with whom they had strong ties (family members or friends), or those with whom they had weak ties (strangers).

All had equally positive effects on happiness.

Oliver Scott Curry is the research director for Kindlab , a team of researchers who study the causes and consequences of kindness.

The group offers tools and programs to help increase kindness; you can even complete the Kindness Quotient , a research-based questionnaire that takes less than five minutes to fill out and gives you an indication of how kind you are compared to others.

I contacted Curry and asked him what he thought about the value and opportunities for kindness in what feels like an incredibly hostile world.

“Humans are naturally kind, under the right circumstances,” he tells me.