5 Psychology Studies That Will Make You Feel Good About Humanity

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By
Elizabeth Hopper
Elizabeth Hopper
Psychology Expert
  • Ph.D., Psychology, University of California - Santa Barbara
  • B.A., Psychology and Peace & Conflict Studies, University of California - Berkeley
Elizabeth Hopper, Ph.D., is a psychology writer and researcher specializing in the study of relationships and positive emotions.
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Updated on November 19, 2019

When reading the news, it's easy to feel discouraged and pessimistic about human nature. Recent psychology studies have suggested that people aren't actually as selfish or greedy as they sometimes seem. A growing body of research is showing that most people want to help others and that doing so makes their lives more fulfilling. 

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When We're Grateful, We Want to Pay it Forward

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You may have heard in the news about "pay it forward" chains: when one person offers a small favor the recipient is likely to offer the same favor to someone else. A study by researchers at Northeastern University has found that people really do want to pay it forward when someone else helps them, and the reason is that they feel grateful. This experiment was set up so that participants would experience a problem with their computer halfway through the study. When someone else helped the subject fix their computer, the subject subsequently spent more time helping a new person with a different task. In other words, when we feel grateful for the kindness of others, it motivates us to want to help someone as well. 

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When We Help Others, We Feel Happier

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In a study conducted by psychologist Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues, participants were given a small amount of money ($5) to spend during the day. Participants could spend the money however they wanted, with one important caveat: half of the participants had to spend the money on themselves, while the other half of participants had to spend it on someone else. When the researchers followed up with participants at the end of the day, they found something that might surprise you: the people who spent the money on someone else were actually happier than the people who spent money on themselves.

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Our Connections With Others Make Life More Meaningful

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The psychologist Carol Ryff is known for studying what is called eudaimonic well-being: that is, our sense that life is meaningful and has a purpose. According to Ryff, our relationships with others are a key component of eudaimonic well-being. A study published in 2015 provides evidence that this is indeed the case: in this study, participants who spent more time helping others reported that their lives had a greater sense of purpose and meaning. The same study also found that participants felt a greater sense of meaning after writing a letter of gratitude to someone else. This research shows that taking time to help another person or express gratitude to someone else can actually make life more meaningful. 

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Supporting Others Is Linked to a Longer Life

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Psychologist Stephanie Brown and her colleagues investigated whether helping others may be related to a longer life. She asked participants how much time they spent helping others. Over five years, she found that the participants who spent the most time helping others had the lowest risk of mortality. In other words, it appears that those who support others end up actually supporting themselves too. It seems that many people are likely to benefit from this, given that the majority of Americans help others 403 in some way. In 2013, one-quarter of adults volunteered and most adults spent time informally helping someone else. 

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It's Possible to Become More Empathetic

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Carol Dweck, of Stanford University, has conducted a wide range of research studying mindsets: people who have a “growth mindset” believe they can improve at something with effort, while people with a “fixed mindset” think their abilities are relatively unchangeable. Dweck has found that these mindsets tend to become self-fulfilling; when people believe they can get better at something, they often end up experiencing more improvements over time. It turns out that empathy can be affected by our mindset too. 

In a series of studies, researchers found that mindsets may even affect how empathetic we are. Participants who were encouraged to embrace “growth mindsets” (in other words, to believe it’s possible to become more empathetic) put in more time and effort trying to empathize with others in situations where empathy might have been more difficult for participants. As one New York Times opinion piece about empathy explains, “empathy is actually a choice.” Empathy isn’t something that only a few people have the capacity for; we all have the ability to become more empathetic.

Although it can sometimes be easy to be discouraged about humanity the psychological evidence suggests that this doesn’t paint a full picture of humanity. Instead, the research suggests that we want to help others and have the capacity to become more empathetic. In fact, researchers have found that we’re happier and feel that our lives are more fulfilling when we spend time helping others.

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Hopper, Elizabeth. "5 Psychology Studies That Will Make You Feel Good About Humanity." ThoughtCo, Oct. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/feel-good-psychology-studies-4152968. Hopper, Elizabeth. (2020, October 29). 5 Psychology Studies That Will Make You Feel Good About Humanity. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/feel-good-psychology-studies-4152968 Hopper, Elizabeth. "5 Psychology Studies That Will Make You Feel Good About Humanity." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/feel-good-psychology-studies-4152968 (accessed June 1, 2023).
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