It’s never as awkward as you think
It’s never as awkward as you think
Psychologist Amit Kumar on what holds us back from behaving more kindly
“We have tons of opportunities to be kind to other people that we don't take advantage of. … One explanation for why we sometimes choose not to do those things that are going to make both us and someone else feel better is that we don't fully understand the magnitude of the impact that we're having on another person.”
–Amit Kumar
Quick Summary
How often do we fail to offer help not because we’re unable or unwilling, but because we’re afraid we can’t do the right thing? Journalist and podcast host Shankar Vedantam explores why, after noticing that a friend or stranger might need help, we’re often reluctant to jump in. Shedding light on the topic is psychologist Amit Kumar, who shares his research on the prosociality paradox and why we don’t behave kindly more often.
You can catch the complete episode (50 mins) on Spotify.
Key Takeaways
We underestimate the impact of our kindness. That’s because when we’re in the position of acting kindly, we tend to fixate on our competence. We second-guess whether we’re actually capable of helping—and if we believe we can't do something well, we tend not to do it all.
On top of that, we also worry about the potential for awkwardness or discomfort. (This is painfully relatable.)
But while givers focus on competence, Amit’s research shows that people on the receiving end of kindness actually care more about the warmth conveyed by the act. In other words, it doesn’t matter how perfect a kind gesture is. This disconnect in perception between givers and recipients is the prosociality paradox.
In one of Amit’s experiments, participants gave hot cocoa to nearby strangers on a cold day. They then reported how they felt and predicted their recipients’ experiences. Amit also followed up with the hot cocoa recipients. Surprise: Recipients appreciated the hot cocoa much more than the givers had expected. (To ensure that recipients weren’t simply conflating appreciation with their enjoyment of the hot cocoa, Amit ran a few other variations on this experiment.)
Apart from leading people to withhold kindness, the prosociality paradox also prevents us from asking for kindness. In one study, visitors at a botanical garden asked strangers to help take a photo of them; then they predicted how the strangers would feel from the request. While visitors expected the strangers to feel inconvenienced, the strangers actually reported being happy to help. Once again, there’s an asymmetry in how we view an act of kindness depending on our role as the giver or receiver.
Kindness can have a downstream effect. This is the pay-it-forward effect, where a single act of kindness can create a chain reaction. If you’re on the receiving end of an act of kindness, you’re more likely to be kind to someone else. However, despite our capacity to create this ripple effect, we often withhold kindness. This is the prosociality paradox at work.
How to overcome the prosociality paradox: express more gratitude. Just like we underestimate the impact of behaving prosocially (or with the intent to help others), we underestimate the impact of expressing gratitude. But showing appreciation for others improves the well-being of all parties: the person giving thanks and the person receiving it.
In another study by Amit, participants wrote letters showing appreciation to someone who had meaningfully impacted them. They then predicted how their letter recipients might feel after reading the messages. As you might have guessed based on the studies mentioned earlier, senders underestimated how positively their recipients would react. They also overestimated how awkward recipients would feel!
Although this isn’t explicitly stated in the podcast, I think the idea is that by expressing gratitude more regularly, people will better understand the impact of their kindness—so they’ll be less reluctant to act kindly when the opportunity arises.
The episode includes a snippet of the writer George Saunders’ 2013 commencement speech at Syracuse University. The full transcript is worth reading, but I especially loved this line: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”
Thoughts
From my experience, the chime of the seatbelt light turning off after landing is the catalyst for immediate chaos on any flight. People rise from their seats to stretch or open the overhead compartments; some even barrel forward in the aisle to disembark. But while returning home last week on a flight that’d been delayed more than an hour, this wasn’t quite what happened. When we landed, an announcement came overhead: Someone sitting in row 35 and who’d never been to the U.S. needed to make a tight connection—so could all of us other passengers please let her deplane first? I spotted the named passenger edge out of a window seat at the back of the plane while everyone else remained seated. And as she made her way down the aisle, everyone else, still seated, started applauding. This wholesome moment, one of patient cooperation between more than a hundred strangers, was the perfect demonstration of how meaningful a small gesture of kindness can be.
If you made it this far, thank you for being here! And in the spirit of this particular topic, I’d also like to thank Brian Cooke and Anil Gupta for recommending Sketch Pad to their own audiences. I am so appreciative of the support this little creative project has received since its very first post—it truly means a lot!
The best way to support Sketch Pad is by sharing these notes with someone who might enjoy them. And if you’d like to, send me your podcast recommendations here.
–Joyce