Designed to Be Kind: Why We Are More Social Than Selfish
On the surface—in media headlines and on the front page—the world seems a cruel, cutthroat, combative place. We hear regularly about all manner of human violence, deceit, and egotism. Yet noting the infinite ways by which all of us could harm and be harmed by others—our vast potential for malice on one hand and our thorough vulnerability on the other—compels the conclusion that the amount of actual harm most humans do unto others is astonishingly small.
Moreover, if you’ve travelled places in your life, then you probably noticed that kindness, not cruelty, is the coin of the realm everywhere. Stranded in a foreign town, you are much more likely to receive help than be harmed by those around you—people who know you not and owe you nothing.
Our capacity for empathy exceeds anything else evident in the animal kingdom. We feel the pain of other humans, but also of other species. We even feel the pain of non-species: We cry when E.T. can’t phone home.
As a general rule, human beings are exceedingly prosocial. This tendency emerges early: "Infants as young as 14 to 18 months of age help others attain their goals, for example, by helping them to fetch out-of-reach objects or opening cabinets for them. They do this irrespective of any reward from adults... and very likely with no concern for such things as reciprocation and reputation."
We seem to be biologically predisposed toward kindness. Yet, as our cognitive capacities and our social world grow more complex in the process of development, our behavior, kind and otherwise, becomes increasingly conditioned on both internal and environmental circumstances. For example, with time, we begin to take others’ intentions into account when judging their (and our own) actions. Research has found that people may be more likely to reciprocate kindness when they can rule out a strategic motive.
Kindness is a universally valued virtue. When parents are asked what they wish for their children, "being kind" is consistently among the top-ranked answers. Kindness is also among the highest-rated traits we desire in a mate. Over the past 50 years, evidence has been accumulating about the myriad benefits of kindness across a variety of health outcome domains. Kindness appears to facilitate positive changes in mood and sense of wellbeing regardless of the target of the kindness; it helps reduce anxiety and maintain wellbeing in times of stress. Merely recalling or witnessing acts of kindness can increase wellbeing. Various “kindness interventions” have been shown experimentally to be effective in improving mood and wellbeing (although these effects tend to be modest and due in part to general arousal produced by the novelty of the kind behavior).
What motivates our kind behavior? Early theorizing, based on Darwin’s evolutionary ideas, sought to frame kindness as selfish in nature: We help others when (and because) it improves our own survival and reproduction odds. Alas, the phenomenon of self-sacrifice in humans and other species (such as ants) posed a problem for evolutionary theory: How does self-sacrifice promote self-survival?
With modern genetics came a proposed solution: the theory of “kin selection” (inclusive fitness) explains how an act of self-sacrifice may help one’s genetic relatives. The theory of “reciprocal altruism,” by which helping others improves the odds of them helping us, explains kindness toward strangers.
Leading with kindness may also help us sort out potential allies (who reciprocate) from foes (who do not). A kind act may raise our esteem in the eyes of peers and help us avoid social rejection. Helping others may also serve as a signal for potential mates that we possess resources abundant enough to spare. Doing something kind may help us (selfishly) reduce the inner tension we feel when our experience of empathy is met by our inaction.
However, a more recent line of thinking holds that kindness is motivated by a social impulse to help others who are in trouble. Multiple experiments since the 1980s have tested this notion. For example, if doing something kind merely reduces the tension created by our experience of empathy and inaction, then individuals will likely choose the easiest tension reduction option available. Yet, when researchers varied the ease of escape from an empathy-arousing situation, participants still elected to help, even when escape from the situation was easy (e.g., nobody would know that they decided not to help). This result suggests that participants were motivated to help another, not to alleviate their own distress.
Such experiments, testing the "altruistic kindness" perspective (we’re kind to help another overcome adversity) against the "selfish kindness" one (we’re kind to help ourselves gain social favors, avoid guilt, reduce tension), tend to support the former.
Upon reflection, it appears plausible that both types of motives are in play. Altruism is a foundational predisposition, but the self-structure, constructed over time upon that foundation, is sensitive to spontaneous and strategic self-interest considerations. Some seemingly kind behavior is motivated by self-concerns. Some such behavior is motivated by concerns for the wellbeing of others.
Kindness is often considered a positive individual quality or a core personality trait, yet it manifests meaningfully only in a relational context. Therefore kindness is probably best viewed as serving neither "self" nor "other" alone. Rather, it mostly serves a more fundamental function, upon which all human survival and thriving depends: the social relationship. As such, it constitutes a positive core relational process, insofar as cooperative, sympathetic relational environments (families, neighborhoods, cultures) tend to facilitate better individual life outcomes.
Indeed, even though we’re wired for social interest, that tendency—as the great psychologist Alfred Adler intuited—is fragile and must be actively nurtured and protected in order to manifest itself fully. Cultural forces may overwhelm biological dispositions. To wit: We are wired for movement, but modern cultural conditions render us sedentary. Likewise, cutthroat, suspicious, and selfish cultural norms can effectively overwhelm the kindness process.
In this context, the notion of “random acts of kindness,” while getting frequent play, is problematic. As with violence—for which randomness gets press even though systemic processes are more consequential—so too with kindness. The bigger social impact comes not from random behavior but from intentional action and systemic habits. Kindly giving money to random people is less useful than giving money to people who need money. Indeed, research suggests that people are more likely to derive joy from helping others when they 1) feel free to choose whether and how to help; 2) feel connected to the people they’re helping; and 3) can see how their help is making a difference.
The psychologist Lee Rowland of the University of Oxford offers the following summary: “The beauty of kindness is that it is open to anyone. We can all opt to choose kindness if we wish. It is free, easily accessible to rich and poor alike, and is universally understood. Thus, if it turns out that simple acts of everyday kindness can send ripple effects of wellbeing through society, then promoting and facilitating that has to be a constructive pursuit.”
Amen.