Cause And Effect Of Kindness

For many centuries, scientist have been baffled on what motivates a human being to perform an act of kindness, and what are the effects that it has on a person’s overall well-being. Simple things such as helping someone carry their heavy groceries to their car, or helping an old lady across the street can have a serious impact on one’s well-being. But before these things can be explained, there is one question that should be asked, what exactly is kindness? For some, kindness can be defined as being compassionate, or polite. Kindness, care, nurturance, generosity, altruistic love, and compassioned are all commonly related terms indicating a common orientation of the self toward the other, kindness is a generous and accommodating activity deliberately

Just being around kind people can make an individual kinder and healthier. Research suggest that even just seeing an act of kindness on the T.V can have just about the same effect, in a 1988 experiment done by researchers and scientist at Harvard University, 132 students watched a 50 minute video of Mother Teresa performing acts of kindness. At the end of the video the students had saliva swabs taken to measure the levels of their salivary immunoglobulin-A (s-IgA) which is an important component of the body’s immune system and the body’s first line of defense against pathogens in food. After analyzing the swabs the scientist conclude that the levels of the student’s salivary immunoglobulin had gone up. After leaving the students alone for an hour and then rechecking their levels of s-Iga the levels were still elevated. The scientist agreed that the students ‘continued to dwell on the loving relationships that characterized the film’ to put it briefly even just seeing acts of kindness can protect an individual from illness. This later was affectionately labeled the ‘Mother Teresa

According to some participants suffering from recurring pain in a study done by Norton, Dunn, and Aknin (2004), it can be just as good as taking pain killers. For some, plunging into performing acts of kindness is the only way to achieve relief for their pain. It is believed that the pain relieving power that comes from kindness comes as part from the endogenous opiates (endorphins). Research demonstrates that these endorphins tie to the cells in the piece of the cerebrum that is in charge of transmitting pain, this takes the spot of the chemicals that transmit pain signals through the body and thus interfering with the transmission of pain signals to the brain. Some investigative studies have explored the impacts of kindness, in a volunteering capacity, on pain. One study, directed in 2002 by medical attendants at Boston school in the USA, demonstrated that patients suffering from severe chronic pain, benefited significantly from helping others that were also in pain. In what was described as a “patient to peer” program, the intensity of the sufferers dropped altogether as an issue of helping other. Depression and disability were also reported to reduce in some