Acts of Kindness
topic
Prosocial behavior — acts of kindness, generosity, volunteering, helping others — reliably produces mood elevation, stress reduction, and health benefits in the giver through the oxytocin and serotonin release of social bonding, the meaning and purpose that helping behavior generates, the shift of attentional focus from personal stressors to external beneficence, and the social connection and community that helping behavior creates and maintains. The helper's high (the positive affect and stress reduction from helping) has been documented across cultures and is associated with improved immune function and longevity.
Role
Prosocial behavior as stress management is one of the most counterintuitive and most powerful available interventions — because the instinct under stress is typically to withdraw, to protect, and to conserve resources, when the biological and psychological research consistently shows that extending oneself toward others produces more stress relief than the conservation approach. The person who is stressed and volunteers, helps a neighbor, calls a friend in difficulty, or contributes to community rather than retreating into self-focused coping is activating the tend-and-befriend stress response that produces neurobiological stress relief through exactly the mechanisms that the withdrawal approach suppresses.
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