In August of last year, BBC Radio 4 teamed up with psychologists at the University of Sussex to launch the Kindness Test. More than 60,000 people from 144 countries completed an online questionnaire all about being nice to others.
Among the many queries, respondents were asked to list factors that prevented them from carrying out kind acts. The most common response by far was fear of misinterpretation.
But results from the Kindness Test also showed that this social anxiety is unwarranted. Fewer than one percent of people replied that they would be embarrassed by receiving an act of kindness. Instead, most said that they would feel “happy,” “grateful,” or “loved.” Since being nice tends to boost well-being, acts of kindness really are a win-win.
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“Performers [of kindness] are not fully taking into account that their warm acts provide value from the act itself,” [said researcher Amit Kumar]. “The fact that you’re being nice to others adds a lot of value beyond whatever the thing is… The recipient is thinking about the thing, plus the fact that it was given to them out of kindness.”
This systematic undervaluation may explain why random acts of kindness aren’t more common. “You don’t realize that that’s really going to matter to them, that that might be the best thing that happened to them that day,” Kumar said.
