It’s in our blood: kind gestures are evolution’s gift to humankind. If it hadn’t been for kindness, the story of our species would most likely have taken a very different turn.
It is evening. Valentine, the main protagonist of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film, Three Colors: Red, leaves a theater in Geneva, and watches for a while as a bent, elderly woman struggles to deposit a bottle in a recycling bin. Valentine helps her. The bottle scene also appears in the two previous parts of Kieślowski’s film trilogy, but in in neither of them does the elderly person receive help. In the previous film, Blue, the protagonist fails to notice the elderly woman, and in White (where instead of the woman, an elderly gentleman appears) the main character watches the man’s struggles with a cruel smile. Only Valentine reacts. “In a sense, that single, simple act of kindness is the climax of the entire trilogy,” wrote American critic Dave Kehr in his 1994 review for the New York-based journal, Film Comment, calling what Valentine does, “the gesture that saves the world.”
Yet according to sociologists, there is nothing extraordinary about the fact that we help each other. On the contrary—refusing assistance is rare, especially when it comes to simple gestures such as holding the door for someone, making tea, or throwing a bottle in a trash can, the type of gesture featured in Kieślowski’s movies. “Prosociality and cooperation are key to what makes us human,” says Giovanni Rossi, a sociologist from the University of California. His team of international researchers decided to explore to what extent kindness is inherent to human nature and whether our willingness to help others depends on the culture we come from.
Help Every Two Minutes
Rossi and his team’s initial assumption was that humans have been “programmed” to be kind irrespective of the culture they are rooted in and the place they inhabit. In order to prove their point, researchers analyzed prosocial behaviors among the representatives of eight cultures and languages, coming from five continents. The research material was gathered from Poles, Italians, Russians, English speakers (both Brits and Americans), Laotians, Siwu (from Eastern Ghana), Cha’palaa (Northern Ecuador) and Murrinhpatha (Northern Australia). The point of the investigations was not to examine the general human tendency toward kindness (this is something that sociology and anthropology have been studying for a long time). Rather, the aim of the enquiry was to see how these behaviors of kindness manifest themselves on the smallest possible scale, when the stakes of a kind gesture are minimal for an individual, but high as far as its social impact goes. In total, more than 350 people and eleven thousand cases of failing to help or a refusal to help were examined. The people who interacted with each other were either related or knew each other, e.g., they were neighbors or came from the same village. The researchers gathered over forty hours of recordings showing everyday interactions. The aim was to see how the individuals taking part in the study responded to spontaneous signals for assistance in common, everyday situations, like handing a knife over in the kitchen, removing a pot from the stove, or switching the light on for someone else. The need for help could be expressed directly or non-verbally (as in the case of the elderly lady whom Valentine helps throw a bottle in the bin). Depending on the culture, the objects of study were recorded in different surroundings: the British at a university, the Poles in their apartments, and the Murrinhpatha outdoor (in this community, people prefer to spend time away from the home, as their houses are often overcrowded). The interactions registered communal cooking, house chores, pastimes—various games, and ordinary conversations.
What were the findings? Firstly, people comply with small requests more often than they refuse them. The smaller the cost of assistance, the more willing people are to perform kind gestures. On average, we help each other every two minutes. Moreover, people accept small requests seven times more often than they refuse them, and six times more often than they ignore them (ignoring is defined as “not complying but also not signaling non-compliance”). Interestingly, the percentage of people ignoring requests was the highest among the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. Researchers believe that the ability to ignore requests could have developed as a mechanism to cope with persistent demands for goods and services, a problem they have been struggling with since the end of the eighteenth century. “Still, our data show that Murrinhpatha speakers regularly comply with and rarely reject recruitments,” points out Joe Blythe, a linguist from Macquarie University in Sydney, and a co-author of the study.
The experiment also showed that, in contrast with complying with serious demands, the tendency toward kindness is universal in all cultures and does not depend on whether the interaction happens among kin or non-kin. “We find that recruitment events are ubiquitous in informal interaction globally. We could theoretically imagine a culture in which people ask for assistance only once an hour, or only a few times a day, or in which people avoid asking for assistance from outside or inside kin relations, but this is not what we find. Around the world, people not only ask for help, they seldom let three minutes go by without doing so,” writes Giovanni Rossi in his article for Nature.
The research also shows that compliance is rarely verbalized. Americans, the British, and Italians diverge from the convention, expressing their willingness to help with a simple, “Yes, sure, no problem.” Interestingly, people hardly ever explain why they have decided to help. In contrast, the majority of people give a reason if they don’t want to, or cannot, grant a request. “(I)n most languages, most complying responses are produced without words, whereas rejections are almost always verbalized,” observes Rossi in the aforementioned article.
As to the way we express refusal to comply, the study shows that we rarely just say “no”. The refusal is usually followed by an explanation: “I’m busy,” “I don’t have time,” “I’m sorry, but I’m going to miss my bus.” Some, instead of refusing in a straightforward way, question the request. According to Rossi’s study this behavior was the most common among Poles. When asked to turn the light on, they would sometimes reply: “Why turn the light on?” Instead of rejecting a request, some cultures prefer to show a reluctancy to cooperate: the Cha’palaa, when refusing to hand an object, lift their arms; Ghana’s Siwu signal their rejection of a favor by turning their back to the speaker. “Overall, we take these findings as evidence of a pervasive cooperative stance in everyday interaction around the world. When people are prompted to, or otherwise given the opportunity to, assist others, they will usually do so, only rarely refusing, regardless of whether they are interacting among kin or non-kin. Ignoring a signal for assistance is also generally infrequent, but more common in some cultures,” Rossi concludes, adding that the difference is not statistically significant.
Intuitive Empathy
What programmed us to be kind? According to experts, it was, to a large extent, evolution. Our ancestors learned to help each other, because it gave them a better chance of survival. Others could also benefit from an exchange of favors. Evolution favored empathetic individuals, as they could form a community that in turn helped people attain their common goals. Thanks to community, the chance of spreading genes was also bigger than in the case of individuals living alone”, argues Ewa Jarczewska-Gerc, PhD, a psychologist from the Department of Psychology of Individual Differences at SWPS University in Warsaw.
Rossi adds that social interactions linked to altruism are, to a large extent, unique to humans. Even though other primates also share (e.g. food), 90 percent of such cases consist of passively receiving or giving and are not a result of a willingness to grant a request of another individual. Such behavior can hardly be called prosocial. Only orangutans and chimpanzees show a sensitivity to clear “signals of need,” and they are able to share their resources as a result of a request or an offer of, for instance, food. “(T)here are few species where this regularly happens as a result of prosocial dispositions . . . small-scale, high-frequency, low-cost transaction(s) . . . provide a common foundation for all social and cultural activity,” argues the scientist in his article in Nature.
Researchers emphasize the fact that human civilization is largely based on reciprocity. In the academic textbook edited by the elder statesman of Polish psychology Jan Strelau, reciprocity is defined as a universal conviction—found in all human communities—that, having received certain gifts or services, we are obliged to reciprocate them. Which means that we help each other not out of pure altruism—the very existence of pure altruism has been the subject of much dispute in academic circles for years—but rather because we expect our assistance to either be reciprocated, or remunerated. “It is one of the universal rules upon which societies function. We are kind because it is in our interest; we help, because we expect the same from others,” Ewa Jarczewska-Gerc, PhD, explains.
Małgorzata Osowiecka, a clinical psychologist from SWPS University argues that when we comply with someone’s request, as insignificant as it may be, then, even if it is coming from a person we don’t know and we’ll probably never meet again, we expect some kind of “payment” from them. “The ‘currency’ might be everything, a simple ‘thank you’, a tap on the back or a smile,” Osowiecka says, adding that being kind makes us feel better. “Some people don’t like to admit that helping others is a source of joy for them as well. And yet, helping is a source of positive emotions; we feel better when we help.” What is more, helping others causes us to build a positive self-image and boosts our own self-esteem. “We like to see ourselves as good individuals willing to provide help. If we are kind and supportive, we strengthen our positive self-image, which in turn builds a sense of well-being and benefits our mental health,” observes Jarczewska-Gerc. These factors also explain why people don’t like to refuse assistance. First of all, we are afraid of losing something—when we break the principle of reciprocity, we know that one day we might find ourselves in need and won’t receive support either. We are also afraid of ostracism and the negative self-assessment that comes with it. “A refusal to help means breaking a social norm, which most people perceive as unpleasant. What’s more, society does not like unhelpful people, and for our part, we don’t like to see ourselves as such either,” Osowiecka says. She admits it is difficult to say “no” or “I won’t do it.” It is easier to refuse if one has a justification. If we add a justification, e.g. “I can’t do it because I’m busy/ I have a stomachache/ I’m going to miss my bus,” we will feel better and our discomfort will diminish, she says.
There is one more thread in our discussion: psychologists claim that kind people are happier. As Jarczewska-Gerc observes, kindness is one of the so-called positive priorities. The term refers to a person’s own actions that translate to their happiness. In accordance with the concept of synthesizing happiness—formulated by Daniel Gilbert, an American psychologist, and exponent of positive psychology—happiness can be thought of in two ways. Firstly, it can be understood as a serendipitous event, or “luck,” like winning a lottery. This kind of happiness has to do with a feeling of intense pleasure; however, this pleasure subsides very quickly, and we are back to the initial level of happiness. The second, more lasting, kind of happiness, is the one we create ourselves. Ewa Jarczewska-Gerc remarks, “It is the kind of happiness we hew out for ourselves. Gilbert calls it synthesized happiness, and the process: the synthesizing of happiness, which consists in conscious everyday actions that aim at building individual happiness. How does one go about it? Acting kind is a good way to start.”
Sources:
Giovanni Rossi, Mark Dingemanse, Simeon Floyd, Julija Baranova , Joe Blythe, Kobin H. Kendrick, Jörg Zinken & N. J. Enfield, “Shared crosscultural principles underlie human prosocial behavior at the smallest scale”, Nature
Kehr, Dave, “To Save the World. Kieślowski’s Three Colors Trilogy.” Film Comment; 30 Nov 1994
Quotes from Małgorzata Osowiecka, Ewa Jarczewska-Gierc come from the author’s conversations with the scholars.
Strelau, Jan, Arkadiusz Doliński (eds.), Psychologia akademicka, Vol. 1&2, Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne (mulitple editions)
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