Does being kind make you happier? What the research really says

You pay for the coffee of the person behind you in the queue. Or you help a flatmate drag a sofa up four flights of stairs. Afterwards there’s that small warm glow. Is it real, or just a nice story we tell ourselves?

“Being kind makes you happy” is printed on enough mugs that it deserves a proper check. The research says yes, it does, a bit. Not a miracle, not nothing. Here’s what the evidence actually shows, how big the effect is, and how to get the most out of it.

Does being kind make you happier? The short answer

Probably, and modestly. The cleanest way to test it is to randomly ask some people to do kind things and compare them with people who don’t. In 2018, Oliver Scott Curry and colleagues at the University of Oxford gathered the experiments of this kind into a meta-analysis: 27 studies, about 4,000 participants in total. Doing acts of kindness did lift the wellbeing of the person doing them. The overall effect was small to medium, an effect size of about 0.28.

What does that mean in real life? Noticeable on average across a group, easy to miss on any one day. One kind act won’t fix a bad month. A habit of them might nudge things in the right direction.

The authors were frank about the weak spots. Many of the studies were small, and most participants were students in Western, educated, wealthy countries. That leaves two fair questions: is the effect solid, and is it just a Western habit?

How strong is the link between kindness and happiness?

A much bigger review gives a reality check. In 2020, Bryant Hui, Jacky Ng, Erica Berzaghi, Lauren Cunningham-Amos and Aleksandr Kogan combined 201 studies with nearly 200,000 participants, covering everything from volunteering to helping a neighbour. They found a reliable but small link between helping others and wellbeing: a correlation of about .13.

One detail is worth knowing. The link was stronger for the deeper kind of wellbeing, a sense of meaning and purpose, than for simply feeling good in the moment. Most of these studies measure kindness and happiness at the same time, though, so they can’t prove which causes which. Happier people may simply help more. That’s why the experiments matter.

Is the warm glow of giving universal?

To test whether the glow is cultural, Lara Aknin, Tanya Broesch, Kiley Hamlin and Julia Van de Vondervoort went somewhere with very little exposure to Western, urban life: a small, rural village in Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, where people live largely by subsistence farming. Their 2015 paper found the same pattern there as in North American studies: giving to others brought more happiness than keeping things for yourself.

That echoes earlier work in Canada by Aknin, Hamlin and Elizabeth Dunn, in which toddlers under two looked happier giving treats away than getting them. These are small studies, and they don’t prove the glow is built in from birth. But they’re a strong hint that it isn’t just something wealthy Western cultures teach.

Does spending money on others make you happier?

This is the most famous kindness experiment. In 2008, Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton gave people on a university campus an envelope with $5 or $20 and asked them to spend it by 5pm, either on themselves or on someone else. That evening, the people who had spent it on others reported being happier. The amount made no difference.

That study was small, with 46 people in the experiment, so on its own it shouldn’t carry much weight. The broader picture is more convincing. In Gallup data from 136 countries, people who had recently donated to charity were happier in 120 of those countries, rich and poor alike. It’s correlation again, but it fits the experiments.

When does kindness make you happiest?

Not all kindness feels the same. A few things seem to matter:

• Choosing it. In studies by Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan (2010), helping boosted the helper’s wellbeing when it was freely chosen, not when people felt pressured or guilted into it. Kindness on autopilot or under duress doesn’t pay the same.
• Remembering it lands. In 2023, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley ran a series of small kindness experiments. In one, people in a Chicago park chose to give a cup of hot chocolate from the park’s kiosk to someone else. The people on the receiving end felt noticeably better than the givers predicted. We underestimate how much a small kindness means, which is one reason we do it less than we could.
• Keeping it social. Many of the kind acts in these studies involve another person you can see, thank or talk to. Kindness is often a form of connection, and connection is closely tied to how happy people are.

What kindness won’t do

The folklore oversells it. Kindness isn’t a cure for depression, a guaranteed mood boost or a cosmic transaction where good deeds get paid back. If you’re burnt out from caring for everyone else, the answer isn’t more giving. The reality is simpler: helping others is one modest, reliable way to feel a little better and a little more connected, and it costs very little to try.

Try this: a one-week kindness experiment

1. Pick a number. Plan a handful of kind acts this week, a few more than you’d usually do. Small is fine.
2. Choose them yourself. Skip anything you’d do out of guilt. Go for the ones you actually want to do.
3. Make one about money. Buy someone lunch, or send a small donation somewhere you care about.
4. Make one about attention. Call the friend who’s been quiet. Listen properly, phone face-down, follow-up questions included.
5. Notice the effect. At the end of each day, jot down how you felt. You’re running your own tiny experiment, not taking a test.

The kindness of listening

If you’d like to try this with someone new, Everconnected matches you with people who share your values and interests, for one-to-one conversations by voice. It’s free to join: create an account at app.everconnected.com, or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Questions people ask

Sources

1. Curry, O. S., Rowland, L. A., Van Lissa, C. J., Zlotowitz, S., McAlaney, J., & Whitehouse, H. (2018). Happy to help? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76, 320-329. doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.02.014
2. Hui, B. P. H., Ng, J. C. K., Berzaghi, E., Cunningham-Amos, L. A., & Kogan, A. (2020). Rewards of kindness? A meta-analysis of the link between prosociality and well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 146(12), 1084-1116. doi.org/10.1037/bul0000298
3. Aknin, L. B., Broesch, T., Hamlin, J. K., & Van de Vondervoort, J. W. (2015). Prosocial behavior leads to happiness in a small-scale rural society. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(4), 788-795. doi.org/10.1037/xge0000082
4. Aknin, L. B., Hamlin, J. K., & Dunn, E. W. (2012). Giving leads to happiness in young children. PLoS ONE, 7(6), e39211. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0039211
5. Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319(5870), 1687-1688. doi.org/10.1126/science.1150952
6. Aknin, L. B., Barrington-Leigh, C. P., Dunn, E. W., Helliwell, J. F., et al. (2013). Prosocial spending and well-being: Cross-cultural evidence for a psychological universal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 635-652. doi.org/10.1037/a0031578
7. Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 222-244. doi.org/10.1037/a0016984
8. Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2023). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(1), 236-252. doi.org/10.1037/xge0001271