Professor Lara Aknin on the numerous physical health and emotional rewards of giving and gratitude.

The famous philosopher Seneca once remarked, “Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.” While generosity and kind deeds are fundamental for becoming good people, did you know that these attributes also yield emotional and physical health benefits?

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health conducted a seminar called “Be kind, live longer? The surprising health benefits of giving back,” with speakers Laura Kubzansky, Ashley Whillans, and moderator Patrick Skerrett. Many research studies highlight how lending a helpful hand to others and being grateful in our own lives can lead to numerous emotional and physical health advantages, ranging from elevating mood to lowering blood pressure.

Lara Beth Aknin, a Canadian professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University, also emphasizes the emotional rewards of acts of kindness. Her own research began with conducting student samples while studying at the University of British Columbia.

The research demonstrated that whether it was spending money on others or any other act of kindness, helping others resulted in bringing happiness to the person performing the kind deed. At the same time, it raised important questions about how generalizable these rewards of generosity can be.

Professor Aknin and her research partners in India, South Africa and Uganda wanted to see if the emotional rewards of giving were felt across all cultures. The work was tested on toddlers under two years old who don’t care about giving money but do care about sharing food. It was observed that kids smile more when they give.

Interestingly, a similar response was observed in ex-offenders. The study was further validated when it was found that even people who one might expect to have had fewer chances to experience such emotions felt emotionally rewarded. A giving outlook doesn’t just offer the emotional benefit of happiness, it also has physical health benefits. Professor Aknin cited the “Broaden and Build” model by Barbara Fredrickson and spoke about how positive emotional experiences help to expand people’s “Thought-action repertoires,” the limited range of actions that a person who is experiencing negative emotions can imagine and choose to take.

Such experiences help them develop long-term personal resources, which include social, psychological, intellectual and physical resources. The emotional rewards of giving also affect the body’s cortisol levels. Research has revealed that generous people have higher cortisol-recovery rates.

She also mentioned how many people have an intuitive sense of sharing and do not always recognize the emotional benefits that they would get from helping others. Many perform philanthropic acts just for their own material gains. The hope, therefore, is to encourage people to give back and show they care without being driven by résumé-padding or selfish motives.

Professor Aknin mentioned that many epidemiological approaches have been used to study the relationship between prosocial behaviour and long-term health, and observational data that consider various cohorts have been tracked for a long time. Additionally, groups of healthy individuals have been asked what kinds of activities they participate in or what their goals are.

Studies have examined how much a person donates to charities, volunteers for organizations or helps others. Researchers have monitored subjects for from five to 20 years, depending on the study, to see if those who have practiced more of these altruistic habits are less likely to experience various health consequences.

Numerous markers, including mortality and cardiovascular disease and, more recently, cognitive aging, have been examined, and the results are compelling: people who volunteer more and donate to charities over an extended period are less likely to suffer from heart disease, are more likely to live longer and have better cognitive health in the long run.

Commenting on the threads that link community and generosity, Professor Aknin added that in tight-knit communities, people are more inclined to give locally. There is a general human desire to want to see the positive impact of our own contributions, and that helps to build a strong social fabric and a more caring community. When asked about the most effective way to encourage people to donate, Aknin observed that people are more likely to support or give to causes that are personally relevant to them. Therefore, if people are to give voluntarily and in meaningful ways to the needy in their community or to causes that resonate with them, they first have to become aware of what those might be.

INTERVIEW BY MARC CASTALDO