Turns out that being kind to others not only makes you happier, but it can make you healthier, too, research has found.
To celebrate World Kindness Day, here are some of the benefits experts have found that come from acts of kindness.
Kindness makes you happier
Researchers did an experiment with a group of toddlers on how choosing to share made them happier, an article for the Atlantic written by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Adam Grant and Allison Sweet Grant noted.
The children were each given either Goldfish or graham crackers to eat. Then, the children were invited to share their treat with a puppet, who would “eat” the food and say “yum.”
Researchers analyzed the facial expressions of the children as they participated, and made a surprising finding — the children appeared “significantly” happier when sharing than when they were given the treat to eat, the Atlantic reported.
What’s more, the toddlers were even happier when they were sharing their own treats rather than food that came from somewhere else, according to the Atlantic.
This happiness that results from acts of giving happens because generosity activates reward centers in the brain, Grant wrote for the Atlantic. Some psychologists refer to this feeling as a “helper’s high.”
Kindness makes you healthier
Another study, this time involving rabbits, also found unexpected results from kindness, Dr. Kelli Harding of Columbia University told BBC News.
The study was examining rabbits separated in different groups, Harding explained to BBC, “One set had better outcomes and they wanted to find out what was going on. It turned out the rabbits doing better were under the care of one really kind researcher.”
As a doctor herself, Harding said she was “absolutely shocked” when she learned about the study (which she was not involved in) and that she “felt like there was an urgent message” to be found in that research, according to BBC.
Harding has done further research on this phenomenon and has recently published a book on the subject, “The Rabbit Effect.”
Kindness “helps the immune system, blood pressure, it helps people to live longer and better,” Harding told BBC. “It’s pretty amazing because there’s an ample supply and you can’t overdose on it. There’s a free supply. It’s right there.”
Bonus: Kindness makes other people want to be kind, too
In 2017, a McDonalds in Indiana made national headlines for an unusual reason. It was Father’s Day, and a customer in the drive-through line told the cashier that she wanted to pay for the meal of the customer behind her — a father with four young children in the car, according to the Washington Post.
When the father learned about what the woman had done, he offered to pay for the customer in the car behind him — and this chain continued 167 times, with each customer paying for the person behind them, the Post reported.
A study has found that people who first watched a video about a person being kind to strangers were more likely to give money to charity, according to the Post.
“When people are exposed to an emotional experience of kindness, they’re more likely to respond in kind,” Daniel Fessler, the researcher behind the study and director of the Bedari Kindness Institute at UCLA, told the Post. “Can we predict who will have this or not? Yes, we can. But it depends on what kind of expectations they have about other people.”