Kindness is a quality that pushes us to act in a kind, caring, caring, respectful manner towards another person. It is difficult to measure because it remains subjective, but researchers from the University of Oxford in England wanted to know if it was possible to quantify kindness and what the profiles of the “nicest” people were.
For their research, they asked 4,800 people to rate 385 acts of kindness based on the effort required to do it (what the researchers called “the cost”) and the benefit it provided. Thanks to a points system (which spares you the complex calculations), the researchers divided acts of kindness into 4 categories: acts of kindness that are inexpensive and of little benefit (for example: adding the birthday of a knowledge on one’s calendar, holding the door for one’s neighbor), inexpensive but very beneficial acts of kindness (helping someone cross the street), very costly and not very beneficial acts of kindness (letting a colleague take credit for merit of a common project) and the acts of very expensive and very beneficial (adopt a child). Next, the researchers asked the participants what actions they were willing to do.
Before doing an act of kindness, the majority of people consider the cost/benefit ratio. “Most are willing to perform low-cost, high-benefit acts, but not high-cost, low-benefit acts“, explain the researchers in their study. The kindest people are willing to perform acts of kindness that cost them a lot of effort (time or energy) without gaining any personal benefit and without expecting anything in return. “They show natural, spontaneous and gratuitous generosity, care more about others than themselves, they put themselves second.“, explain the researchers. Concretely, they like to be of service (shopping for a sick relative, walking a neighbor’s dog, etc.) in a completely selfless way.
Beyond this study, kindness is a global state of mind combining several human qualities (empathy, altruism, active listening (not cutting people off, giving relevant advice), respecting limits on the other, compassion) which has been widely studied by many humanists, philosophers and sociologists. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “it is the best indicator of well-being and pleasure of existence“.