UCR PSYC 149 Final Exam

How do Acts of Kindness Increase Happiness?

Acts of kindness often relieves guilt, distress or discomfort over other difficulties and suffering.

It encourages a sense of awareness for your own good fortune.

Ways to Practice Kindness

Timing
Variety is the spice of life
Chain of kindness
Caveat

What is Empathy?

Is an other-oriented emotional response elicited by and congruent with the perceived welfare of someone else.

Includes feelings of sympathy, compassion, soft heartedness, and tenderness.

Empathy is Not?

A single discrete emotion.

Empathetic Emotions

Product of perceiving another in need and adopting their perspective.

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

Claim that feeling empathetic emotion for someone in need evokes altruistic motivation to relieve that need.

Altruism

Concern and help for others that asks nothing in return.

Devotion for others without conscious regard for oneself.

Difference Between Altruism and Helping

Altruism: Refers to motivation to increase another’s welfare, as opposed to ones own. 

Helping (prosocial behavior): Simply refers to the behavior that benefits another

Evolutionary Functions of Altruism

Social behaviors have a genetic basis, such as that behaviors survive in the present because they have been selected for reproductive success in the past.

Kin Selection

The idea that behaviors that help a genetic relative are favored by natural selection. Such behaviors ultimately increase likelihood of surviving and reproducing (Evolutionary Theory).

Social Exchange Theory

Social relationships are best understood by peoples desire to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs.

5 Self Interest Motives Underlying Altruism

Feeling good about oneself
Reducing distress of another’s suffering through empathy
Boosting ones self image
Hoping to receive rewards
Hoping to improve ones reputation

5 Acts of Kindness Study

Ask people "how much have you helped in the course of 6 weeks (single say & different days)

Control Group: their rates of help decreased because they didn't have time to help others

Most Powerful: people who did all their five acts of kindness in the same day showed they were a lot happier than those who did it on different days.

Vary Your Kind Acts Study

List 15 acts you can imagine doing in the next few months

High Variety: You choose from the list whichever act you want to do

Low Variety: You choose 3 out of the list over and over again

Control: Wrote events that happened to them, didn't do kind acts

Results: Didn't matter if it was 3 or 9 acts over time, difference was in variety. 

Low Variety: They did same acts, saw it as a chore, were bored. 
High Variety: They got to choose the act of kindness they wanted they were happier.

Spend Money on Self VS Others Study

Given either 5 or 20 dollars in the morning, told to spend it either on self or someone else by 5 pm

Results: Cash amount had no effect on happiness
Target of Spending: Spent on others were happier.

Kind Acts for Others VS World VS Self Study

One day each week over 4 weeks, 4 groups
Doing 3 acts for others, world or self

Control Group: Just wrote about something about their day. 

Results: Others and for the world acts of kindness were happier because when doing something for yourself the feeling doesn't last, it’s a temporary feeling.

Kind Acts and Peer Acceptance Study

12 Acts of Kindness for 4 Weeks

Results: at the end of the study kid were asked who they wanted to be friends with and number of noms each kid got; before and after the study

Kids in the kindness group had more nominations.
Kids who did more acts of kinds became more popular and made more friends
most acts of kinds were done at home (when you did acts at home when you go to school you are seen as more optimistic and better liked which draws kids to you).

Kindness is Contagious Study

Office workers

Givers: they choose people every week and do acts of kindness for them (them: receivers)

Asked givers to help receivers but they did more of what they asked

Receivers: didn't know they were in the study and did more acts of kindness 

Observers: Started helping everyone else, they were inspired to be kind by others

"Elevation Effect" - You get inspired to do good to others if you see people doing good to others around you.

4 Ways to Practice Forgiveness

Appreciate Being Forgiven
Imagine Forgiveness 
Write a Letter of Forgiveness
Practice Empathy

The Forgiving Personality and It Correlates

Agreeableness: (show altruism, empathy, care and generosity) Have higher levels of moral responsibility and share resources to people who have been rude inconsiderate to them

Emo Stability: Lower vulnerability to negative emo experience

Religiousness and Spirituality: These people tend to have high value for forgiveness

Definition and Measurement of Forgiveness

Definition: Series of prosocial motivation changes that occur after a person has incurred a transgression you have a positive feelings towards the transgression and are motivated to help him or her.

Measurement: Tendency to Forgive scale (TTF)

3 Processes thaat Influence Forgiveness

Empathy: Compassion and Sympathy
Generous Attributions: Giving transgressors benefits of the doubt
Rumination: Dwelling on transgressions

3 Motivations After Transgressions

Avoidance - Motivation as a result of being hurt
Revenge - As a result of righteous anger
Benevolence - As a result of positive feelings

3 Benefits of Forgiveness

Preservation of Relationships 
Modulation of Hostility
Happiness
Physical Health

Three Instances When Forgiveness is NOT Beneficial

Believe you won't stay together and you don't treasure preserving the relationship.

He/She is likely to repeat the transgression and hurt you again.

Forgiveness and Health Study

Identify real life offenders, do imaginary exercise
Forgiveness: Empathize with offender and forgive
Unforgiveness: Rehearse the hurt and nurse the grudge

RESULTS:

When imagining forgiveness participants: Felt less aroused, less angry, less sad, positive and in control, and showed less furrowed brows (EMG)

BEING UNFORGIVING IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Forgiveness and Relationship Study

201 College students who had experienced interpersonal transgression within past week
Measured 5x over 9 wks
Forgiveness: Revenge, benevolence, and avoidance
Relationship: Closeness and commitment

RESULTS: Less avoidance and revenge e and more benevolence showed increase with time in closeness and commitment to those who hurt them.

Evidence of opposite causal path on avoidance only those who reported more closeness and commitment showed decreases in avoidance over time.

8 Ways Gratitude Boosts Happiness

Grateful Thinking Promotes Savoring of Positive Life Experience
Experience Gray Bolsters Self-Worth and Esteem
Gratitude Helps Cope w/ Stress and Trauma
Experience of Gratitude Tends to Inhibit Invidious Comp
Experience of Gratitude Encourages Moral Behavior 
Gratitude Can Help Social Bonds, and Straighten Existing
Gratitude is Incompatible with Negative Emotions
Helps Hedonic Adaptation

Ways to Practice Gratitude

Gratitude Journal
Paths to Gratitude
Keep the Strategy Fresh
Express Gratitude Directly to Another

Summarize 10 Hypothesis Benefits about Benefits of Gratitude

Gratitude facilitates coping with stress and reduces toxic emotions resulting from self and social comparisons.

Definition and Measurement of Gratitude

Definition: As an emotion - a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life. As a trait - disposition to feel and express consistently the emotion of thankfulness across situations and across time to do so appropriately.

Measurement: Gratitude Quotient (GQ-6)

Benefits of Gratitude

Savor pos experience
Stops comparing ourselves 
Bolsters self esteem
Cope w stress and trauma
Neutralizes neg emotions
Increases humility and leads to behave morally
Solidifies friendship and feel more connected 
Prevents us from taking others for granted

Count Your Blessings Study

Participants were instructed to count their blessings for 6 weeks

Once a week (Sunday nights)
3x a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday)

Control: List what you’ve done over 7 days
Results: once a week increased in gratitude and happiness.

Optimism and Gratitude Study

Wrote for 15 min for 8 weeks

Expressing optimism: Future-Self
Expressing gratitude: Gray Letters
Control: List what you've done over 7 days

Results: Non-motivated decreased happiness

Gratitude and Optimism Across Cultures

Participants wrote for 10 minutes per week for 6 weeks

Conditions: Express optimism, express gratitude, and control

Results: Optimism and gray increased well being increased gratitude for Asian-Americans.

Practicing Gratitude and Kindness in the U.S VS South Korea

Seoul national university & UCR
Wrote gratitude letters each week
3 acts of kindness each week

Results: gratitude increased in the U.S and so did kindness
South Korea decreased in gratitude and increased in kindness

Recalling Three Good Things that Went Well

Toyota employees (in Tokyo) asked to report 3 good things that happened that week (for 6 weeks).
Wore a movement detection device at work.
Those asked to report 3 good things that has happened to them (it can be something big or small) have an increase in their behavioral rhythm (they moved more).
Being more grateful made the employees more motivated to do well at work, thus made them feel better?

What do people do when they forgive (i.e., what psychological processes do they show)?

Empathy for Transgressor
Generous Attributions and Appraisals 
Rumination About Transgressor (less)

What is Forgiveness Not?

NOT pardoning, condoning, or condoning.

Applying Positive Interventions to Depressed Individuals

Would depressed individuals benefit MORE from happiness interventions? 
Because they have more room to improve and are presumably more motivated to do so or would they benefit LESS?
Because their cognitive and behavioral deficits prevent them from taking full advantage of the strategies or even leading them to backfire.