It is an interview on Gretchen Rubin's blog. Rubin wrote The Happiness Project, and ever since my book club read it I have been following her blog. Here, she interviewed Sonja Lyubomirsky. An excerpt:
An experiment we just published in PLOS ONE showed that when 9- to 11-year old kids were asked to do acts of kindness for several weeks, not only did they get happier over time but they became more popular with their peers. And another big intervention we just finished at a company in Spain showed that asking some employees to be generous to a randomly chosen list of colleagues (we called this our “Secret Santa” manipulation) produced huge benefits (for increasing happiness, connectedness, flow, and decreasing depression) not just for the givers, but for the receivers and even for observers. The recipients of kindness “paid the kind acts forward” and even acquaintances of the givers became happier and were inspired to act more generously themselves.I also liked the bit that dispelled the myth of "random acts of kindness" -- saying that any acts of kindness have a positive effect. I don't know about you but I just cannot do a random act of kindness. I'm always one step ahead of myself, premeditating kindnesses and thwarting the spontaneity. Turns out I'm validated in my belief that the "random" part doesn't matter. :)
1 comment:
That IS good news. My problem is that some of my kind acts don't turn out to be very kind. I will have to get better at this. Any hints?
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