Altruistic behavior can be infectious
If you look at people’s actual behavior over time, most of the evidence suggests that we’re becoming more cooperative and less selfish over time.
In honor of World Kindness Day (and World Kindness Week), we’re asking: what does kindness mean to you? Maybe it’s as life-changing as organ donation or as simple as a smile. However you define it, one thing’s certain — kindness transforms lives.Abigail Marsh, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Georgetown University, says that despite appearances, people are becoming more compassionate.
“If you look at the data and people’s actual behavior over time, most of the evidence suggests that people are actually becoming more cooperative and less selfish over time,” she said. “Rates of unselfish giving behaviors like helping strangers and donating to charity have gone up over time.”
Social media and technology, she added, make altruism easier than ever. “For example, platforms like GoFundMe, which never existed before, give so many people the opportunity to help strangers they never would have had before,” she said. “I’ve heard recently, Taylor Swift, who has done many sneaky donations to needy strangers on GoFundMe the over the years.”
In the spirit of World Kindness Day, which falls on Thursday, November 13th, we’re sharing stories of love, compassion and empathy through everyday acts of goodness.
Want to spread kindness? Marsh says the secret is simple: just start. “It’s kind of like working out,” she said. “Experts always say do whatever you enjoy doing, because then you’ll keep doing it. And the same is true with helping others.”
“As long as it’s something that you personally find rewarding, it’s much more likely to lead to an increasing spiral of pro-social behavior in the future.”
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