UCLA is launching an interdisciplinary research institute on kindness, exploring its health benefits and exploring ways to spread it.
A friendly smile. A food pantry donation. Or, a remarkable act of Los Angeles benevolence — allowing a driver to cut in front of you.
Research by UCLA scientists already has shown that mindfulness and kindness actually alter the behavior of genes, turning down those that promote inflammation, which can lead to heart disease or certain cancers, and turning up the activity of genes that protect against infections.But the ultimate goal of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute is to spread kindness and promote a more humane world.
Kindness is complimenting someone to make them feel good, not to get what you want. It’s sending a donation to a charity even if the check gets lost in the mail. It’s contemplating a legitimate reason why a driver who cuts you off might be in a hurry.
“As troubling as violence and cruelty are in our society, the actual level of positive cooperation is astounding at an evolutionary level,” he said. “Our species is a hyper-cooperative one. No other species is engaged in such a large level of cooperation among individuals who are not kin.” UCLA researchers also have shown that kindness can significantly ease depression and anxiety. Michelle Craske, a professor of psychology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences, has demonstrated that patients who received compassion training to cultivate joy, gratitude, loving-kindness and generosity, and engaged in kind acts — offering to help coworkers on projects, for instance — significantly reduced their depression.
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