Category: Science

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Warning: 1 Act of Kindness Per Day Doesn’t Make You Happier. But 5 Acts of Kindness Per Day Just Might

Warning: 1 Act of Kindness Per Day Doesn't Make You Happier. But 5 Acts of Kindness Per Day Might

Warning: 1 Act of Kindness Per Day Doesn't Make You Happier. But 5 Acts of Kindness Per Day Might

In 2005, a study was conducted proving that engaging in deliberate acts of kindness leads to increased well-being, with one caveat: it must be done in such a way that exceeds the individual’s propensity to be kind.

Specifically, engaging in an act of kindness per day, for a week, will not lead to well-being benefits, but doing, say, five acts of kindness in a single day, does.

Why is it that just doing little acts of kindness doesn’t really make you feel that much better? Like anything that’s positive for you, eventually you’re going to start taking it for granted over time, and it’s not going to make you as happy as it once did. There’s a term for this, and it’s called ‘hedonistic adaptation.’ Now there’s a trick to scratching this itch of the human condition, and it’s to actively plan out experiences that throw off the pattern.

So why don’t you try it for yourself? Go out and fill a day with doing the world some good.

Image: "Friendship" by Pink Sherbet Photography.
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The Health Risks of Social Isolation

The Health Risks of Social Isolation

The Health Risks of Social Isolation

I did my doctoral dissertation on the health effects of social isolation, and what we found was that people who were socially isolated, i.e. people who were either not married, or didn’t have many friends and relatives, or didn’t belong to voluntary or religious organizations, had a mortality risk that was about 3 times as high as people who had many more sources of contacts.

–Dr. Lisa Berkman, director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, discusses research findings showing health risks rise for people who are socially isolated, especially older adults.

Also, here is Dr. Berkman’s abstract for her paper “The Role of Social Relations in Health Promotion“:

In considering new paradigms for the prevention and treatment of disease and disability, we need to incorporate ways to promote social support and develop family and community strengths and abilities into our interventions.There is now a substantial body of evidence that indicates that the extent to which social relationships are strong and supportive is related to the health of individuals who live within such social contexts. A review of population-based research on mortality risk over the last 20 years indicates that people who are isolated are at increased mortality risk from a number of causes. More recent studies indicate that social support is particularly related to survival postmyocardial infarction. The pathways that lead from such socioenvironmental exposures to poor health outcomes are likely to be multiple and include behavioral mechanisms and more direct physiologic pathways related to neuroendocrine or immunologic function. For social support to be health promoting, it must provide both a sense of belonging and intimacy and must help people to be more competent and self-efficacious. Acknowledging that health promotion rests on the shoulders not only of individuals but also of their families and communities means that we must commit resources over the next decade to designing, testing, and implementing interventions in this area.

Image: "008/365: Isolation" by Josh Pesavento.
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What Is the Most Astounding Fact about the Universe? – Neil deGrasse Tyson

What Is the Most Astounding Fact about the Universe - Neil de Grasse Tyson

The most astounding fact [about the universe] is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth, the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures.

These stars, the high mass ones among them, went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy—guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself.

These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems, stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself, so that when I look up at the night sky and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.

When I reflect on that fact, I look up, many people feel small because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars.

There’s a level of connectivity. That’s really what you want in life. You want to feel connected. You want to feel relevant. You want to feel like you are a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. That’s precisely what we are just by being alive.

— Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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The Science of Happiness – An Experiment in Gratitude

The Science of Happiness - An Experiment in Gratitude

The Science of Happiness - An Experiment in Gratitude

Psychologists have scientifically proven that one of the greatest contributing factors to overall happiness in your life is how much gratitude you show.

In this experiment put on by Soul Pancake, subjects who wrote a letter of gratitude, thinking of someone that influenced them the most, saw a rise in happiness of 2-4%.

However, for subjects who picked up the phone and personally expressed their gratitude to the person that influenced them the most in their life, there were happiness increases of 4-19%, showing that expressing your gratitude will make you a happier person.

This happiness experiment in gratitude is based on the following study:

Martin E. P. Seligman, Tracy A. Steen & Christopher Peterson, “Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions.”

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Benefits of Sympathy and Cross-Race Friendships Explained by Science

Benefits of Sympathy and Cross-Race Friendships Explained by Science

Benefits of Sympathy and Cross-Race Friendships Explained by Science

When people do overcome the temptation of self-interest and instead help and cooperate with others, they become more respected in their group, and then upon receiving that respect, they then help others even more.

–Robb Willer, Ph.D., M.A., B.A. Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford University.

 

3 Benefits of Being Sympathetic

We [psychologists] have become interested in concepts like compassion and gratitude. Only 8 or 9 years ago, there was one study of gratitude in scientific literature. 1,000s of studies of anger, and one study of gratitude.

There is this long standing assumption that in terms of evolution, it is survival of the fittest, and it is important to know, that wasn’t Darwin who said that, but somebody who came after Darwin named Herbert Spencer. What Darwin said in Descent of Man is, ‘Sympathy is our strongest instinct.’

Sympathetic people do better in the game of reproduction. It turns out they are more attractive as mates. Sympathetic parents have kids who are more resilient, and who thrive more. Sympathetic people do better in competitive situations with strangers. Data shows kind people fair pretty well and evoke a lot of trust in others.

–Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychology professor leading research in emotion and social interaction.

 

See How a Cross-Race Friendship Is Good for Your Health

In a Berkeley experiment designed by psychologist Rudy Mendoza-Denton, researchers sought answers to overcome prejudice.

They put two strangers of different races together in a room. They first measured the level of the hormone Cortisol, which is elevated when a person is under stress. They are given increasingly personal questions to ask each other, to impel them to get to know each other better.

After the last meeting, in which they play a game, their Cortisol levels are tested again. The study shows that Cortisol levels dropped significantly, as low as the control group of same race pairs.

I expected those anxiety effects, and those awkwardnesses that happen in those initial interactions to persist for a long time, but those barriers came down pretty quickly, and we were really happy to see that. I think one of the primary lessons to learn is that cross-race friendship can be good for your health.

–Rudy Mendoza-Denton, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley.

 

The Science of Happiness [Video]

The above quotes were taken from the below video on the science of happiness:

Image: "• • • Happy • • •" by David Robert Bliwas.
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The Laughter Epidemic: An Example of How Much We’re Connected and Affected by Others’ Emotions

The Laughter Epidemic

The Laughter Epidemic

Tanzania 1962: In a girls’ boarding school in Africa, three students suddenly started laughing uncontrollably. Six weeks later, more than half the school had been infected. The school was closed and people were sent back to their towns and villages. Ten days later, another curious thing happened: the laughter broke out again in a village over 55 miles away, where some of the students lived. 100s more were affected. Other outbreaks started over a wide area, until the epidemic peated out over six months. By then, over 1,000 people had been affected, though they all fully recovered.

 

So why did it happen?

 

Some villagers thought it was caused by radiation poisoning, and doctors were called in to investigate. Their findings: mass psychogenic illness.

 

Emotions of all kinds can spread quickly.

 

How you feel depends on how others feel.

 

In fact, even a friends’ friends’ friend can affect you.

 

We’re biologically hardwired to mimic people around us.

 

By copying others’ outward behavior, we also adopt their inner emotions: your friend feels happy. She smiles. So you smile, and you feel happier. Positive emotions like this can fuel an emotional stampede, which can often last longer than a stampede of negative emotions.

–Excerpt from the above video, “Laughter Epidemic.”

Image: "The three gigglers" by Alan Cleaver.