Why being kind is as important as ever

Your parents told you to be nice to people. Guess what? They were right. Here’s why.

by Arnold R. Grahl

Doing good doesn’t only benefit other people. It helps us, too.

Studies show that helping others boosts serotonin, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel satisfied. Another benefit to feeling rewarded when we do good: It lowers our stress levels. Who couldn’t use that right now?

Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, people everywhere are feeling anxious about their health, their families, their jobs, and their futures.

“When we are all feeling lower than we are used to feeling, with some levels of situational depression, we all need a boost,” says psychologist Mary Berge, a member of the Rotary Club of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA, who has led discussions with many Rotary clubs about coping during the pandemic.

“There has been a lot of research that when we are helping others, or when we are doing something for someone else, our reward centers light up in the brain and our stress levels go down as cortisol is released.”

It feels good to do good

In a 2016 study, researchers asked participants about scenarios in which they either gave or received support. The study, published in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, found that MRI tests showed only the instances of giving correlated to reduced stress and enhanced activity in the brain’s reward centers — which suggests that giving support ultimately had greater mental benefits than receiving it. for more....