We’ve all heard the old adage, “kill them with kindness.” A new study conducted by the Association for Psychological Science suggests that this adage is true—especially for the extermination of stress and negative emotions.
A total of 77 adults, ranging in age from 18 to 44 years old, participated in the 14-day study. The participants were asked to report any stressful life events they experienced each day, as well as whether they had engaged in various helpful or kind behaviors toward others. Finally, they were asked to rate their daily mental health on a scale of zero to 100.
Researchers found that helping others boosted participants’ daily well being; a greater number of generous behaviors was associated with higher levels of daily positive emotion and better overall mental health.
“Our research shows that when we help others, we can also help ourselves,” says study author Emily Ansell. “Stressful days usually lead us to have a worse mood and poorer mental health, but our findings suggest that if we do small things for others, such as holding a door open for someone, we won’t feel as poorly on stressful days.”
