Why kindness? Let's see what the research has to say. In this week's episode, Jaclyn talks to kindness.org Chief Science Officer, Dr. Oliver Scott Curry about the science of kindness and his groundbreaking work in kindness.org's research hub, Kindlab.
Dr. Oliver Scott Curry joins Jaclyn to discuss the groundbreaking research he is leading at kindness.org, how kindness has shaped his career, and understanding the science of kindness.
Dr. Curry is Chief Science Officer at kindness.org, leading the innovative research hub, Kindlab. He is also a Research Affiliate at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2005.
As CSO at Kindness.org, Oliver and his team are working to answer questions like: Why are people kind? How kind are people, really? Why aren’t people kinder? What are the most effective kind acts you can do? And, how can we make the world a kinder place? The work involves both pure and applied research on the causes and consequences of kindness.
This podcast is one of the many ways we live out our organization's mission to educate and inspire people to choose kindness. Visit our site kindness.org and sign up to become a part of our global community which spans more than 100 countries. It's free to join and when you do you'll be the first to get access to our latest research, tools, and even episodes of this podcast. Let's build a kinder world, together. Contact us at podcast@kindness.org or on social at @kindnessorg.
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Why Kindness? Dr. Oliver Scott Curry
Intro: Why kindness? Because it makes a difference. For connection. Kindness can change lives. It's contagious. The science says you'll be glad you did. Kindness is The key to a healthier, happier world. Why kindness? While no one answer is the same, one thing is clear. Kindness is something we all know, but do we know why it matters?
Jaclyn: I'm your host, Jaclyn Lindsay, co founder, CEO of kindness. org, and you're listening to Why Kindness?
Hello friends, and welcome to the why kindness podcast. This is your host, Jaclyn Lindsay. I'm really, really excited about today's guest, Dr. Oliver Scott Curry. He is very close to this mission because he has actually been involved with us since day one and now serves as our chief science officer at kindness.org. Oliver has become not only an integral part of how we think about doing our work. And having an impact across the world, but he's become a dear friend of mine and someone who's really important in how I think about this mission. So today's conversation is going to be a little all over the place.
We're going to talk about kindness, why it matters to him, why he got into studying it. And we're also going to learn more about its benefits and the impact it can have on you, our listeners, every time you're choosing kindness. And with that, I'm going to welcome Dr. Oliver Scott Curry. Hello.
Oliver: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Jaclyn: Oliver, hello. Thank you for being with us today. Where are you calling in from?
Oliver: Um, I'm calling in from a village just outside Oxford in England.
Jaclyn: Amazing. All right. So let's get into things. Let's just start with this big idea. Why kindness? So tell us why you think kindness matters.
Oliver: Uh, what, well, it matters in all kinds of ways.
Um, from a research point of view, it matters because, um, it's been a, it's been a longstanding puzzle in the behavioral sciences to explain why humans and other animals are ever nice to each other, why they ever. pay a cost to benefit someone else. And we're at an exciting point now where we have, once upon a time, we didn't have any answers.
And now we have a whole bunch of answers, a whole bunch of explanations that explain why people are ever kind. And so it's an exciting time to be trying to make sense of those explanations and use them to make, uh, to see if we can make the world a kinder place.
Jaclyn: is your backgrounds, your professional background.
Oliver: Well, so my background is, um, my immediately prior to joining you, um, at kindness. org, I was teaching and conducting research in anthropology in the anthropology department at the University of Oxford. Um, and before that, my, my PhD and previous degrees were in, strangely enough, in political science at the London School of Economics.
And throughout All of those, uh, those different stages, I was always interested in human nature and whether people were good or bad, selfless or selfish, and you know, what, what were you, what were humans naturally like, and that took me through bits of politics and bits of, uh, philosophy specifically.
moral philosophy, all of which brought me to this, to this point.
Jaclyn: So are we selfish or selfless?
Oliver: Um, we're, we're, we're a bit of both. And it's, uh, we have the capacity, obviously humans have the capacity to be enormously cruel to others, but we also have the capacity for. an enormous amount of kindness and an enormous amount of cooperation was sometimes described as a hyper cooperative or ultra social species.
Um, and that's been our USP. Um, the fact that humans are so super social and so cooperative is one of the main reasons why we've been so successful as a species. So we, we have the capacity for both, which, which ones we express depend on. Uh, a whole bunch of things, but including the circumstances, the environment we find ourselves in.
So part of the, I guess, the goal of behavioral science or interventions in general is trying to shape the environment in a way that brings out the best in us.
Jaclyn: So your previous research looked at morality and seeing if we could come up with a way or are, are there morals that are the same around the world, cross culturally?
Tell us. What you found, what you set out to do, what you discovered.
Oliver: Yeah. Well, so morality is one of those areas where it's been a, as a word, it's been a big mystery for hundreds if not thousands of years, where where we get our sense, sense of right and wrong from and what it is and how it works. And ho is it the same all over the world or not in nature, are acquired all the rest.
So it's been a kind of a big mystery in the last. few decades, I'd say that we probably made more progress answering those questions in the last few decades than we have over the last the previous thousand years. And to the best of our knowledge, the answer seems to be that morality is a collection of cooperative rules that help us get along and Uh, work together and, and keep the peace.
We, uh, and broadly different ways of cooperating with each other for, for mutual benefit. There's different types of cooperation, which explains why there's different types of moral rules or different, different moral themes. They include family values, group solidarity, reciprocity. heroism, deference, fairness, and property rights.
Um, we find simple versions of those co operative behaviors in, in many other species. Humans are especially co operative in all those ways. They regard those ways of behaving as morally good. And the researcher referring to looked at whether that was the case. around the world. And we looked at the ethnographic records of, of 60 different societies around the world.
And we found, um, we found examples of these moral rules all around the world in every continent, under every circumstance, societies, individuals and societies vary a little bit in how, how much weight they attach to these different rules. So in, in some places, family trumps fairness and in other places, it's the other way around.
Um, but we. But broadly speaking, we found this, this universal set of, of moral rules that everyone everywhere agrees is the right thing to do.
Jaclyn: All right. Don't keep us in suspense. What are they?
Oliver: Well, like, like I said, it was so obviously this is compressing a lot of material into us into a slogan, but the seven rules are, uh, help your family, help your group- return favors, be brave, defer to your superiors, uh, that would be you in my case, uh, divide resources, divide disputed resources fairly, and respect others property.
Jaclyn: So I feel like probably listeners everywhere are thinking, yes, this is well and good, but. Society feels broken and you open the news and it just feels overwhelming with how much bad things are out there happening.
So have you, I don't know, looked at, or do you have an understanding of why it is that we're still breaking the rules? Why it is that. Yes, we can do good things, but we have the capacity for cruelty. Why? Why are we still engaging in that kind of behavior?
Oliver: So, so what the research is talking about, what the ideals are everywhere, what the moral ideals are everywhere, it's a separate question whether people live up to them or to what extent they live up to them.
Most of the research suggests that most people do the right thing most of the time. But not, not everyone. And not always, um, the reason why people, I mean, the reason why bad things still happen goes back to what I said at the beginning that not, not everyone's the same. There are, like I say, most of us are goodies, but there are a few baddies.
Um, a few baddies can create a lot of trouble for everyone else. Um, and. I was just looking at something this morning that said, uh, for example, the majority of online trolling comes from, from a very small minority of people, but it can, they can create a stink that makes it bad for everyone and looks very bad, but it's actually coming from relatively few people.
Um, and it's easier to, generally speaking, it's easier to smash something up than to build it. So a few, a few bad influences can, um, overturn a lot of, a lot of good.
Jaclyn: So let's get into your relationship with kindness, the idea of kindness. Um, do you have a first memory you conjure when I ask you about kindness as a child?
What was it like for you? A memory that stands out when you experienced it or perhaps experienced unkindness?
Oliver: I'm slightly drawing a blank. Well, so one of my first memories of this kind of thing is unfortunately of me, me doing something. So I remember very early, very, I don't know, must've been five or six or something, sitting at the back of the classroom.
And I think the teacher walked past the blackboard and it was an old fashioned blackboard. It was an old fashioned school a few years ago. Um, and it was one of those blackboards that was sort of balanced like an easel on pegs. Um, anyway, I saw the teacher walk past the blackboard and there were kids right at the front of the class.
I don't know, right, sitting down, coloring something in on the floor. And the teacher walked past the blackboard and she knocked it or wafted it or something. And I saw the whole blackboard, uh, tip forward and this whole enormous slab of slate or whatever it was, was about to fall on top of all these kids.
And no one else had seen it, seen this happen. Everyone kind of was, had their heads down or the teacher was walking away. And I remember running to the front and sort of catching this board and just before it tipped over and pushing it back where it was and sort of feeling relieved and pleased. And then the teacher turned around and I, and she didn't know anything had happened and I was out of place.
I should have been sitting down at the back and I was standing at the front. with my hands in the air. Um, and she, and she told me off and I got, I got told off being the wrong place and I couldn't explain what, what happened. She didn't believe it. So I don't know. That's the first thing that came to mind.
I remember thinking that was weird because I've just done, I've done a good thing, but it, if a tree falls in the forest. And nobody hears it, did it really happen? And I got, and I got punished. This is really weird. Um, so that, I dunno, that's a early experience of doing something useful. When I think of, I dunno, when I think of other experiences, it's usually somewhat at the time, but definitely in retrospect, being grateful for things that adults did that they didn't have to, um, so that's.
That includes teachers. I mean, teachers just being good at their jobs and being interesting and being caring enough to discuss things and help us all figure things out. Um, I think in particular of, of, um, scout leaders, like cub leaders who, who, who spent a lot of their time doing, you know, quite taking on a lot of responsibility to take us cubs and scouts on, you know, take us trekking across the Peak District or the, the, uh, Black Mountains in Wales or all over the, you know, all over the place.
Things that make me shudder to think of how many forms you'd have to fill in to do it nowadays. And they probably had to fill in a few then, but take spending an enormous amount of their time and energy doing, uh, you know, taking us on these amazing trips and giving us these amazing experiences, which they didn't have to at all.
Onwards later in my career, when various, you know, more senior academics, for example, took me under their wing, I'm thinking of Helena Cronin and John Tooby, and Cosmides in particular, but there are others. Um, so people who, I dunno, that's why I think of people who, especially more senior people going out of their way to help junior people, I think is what comes to mind.
Jaclyn: Okay. So I have questions about both of those examples. So let's start with the blackboard one. So it's like that happens to you as a four year olds. Do you in any way think that that has like. shaped your understanding of kindness or the idea that you can do something good? And not only is it not seen reciprocated, appreciated, but it's actually like on the contrary, you got almost in trouble for being kind.
Um, so curious, do you feel like that subconsciously, like has affected how you think about kindness or how you show up?
Oliver: I don't know, I have to have someone psychoanalyze But I think, I think it made me think that the The world's a weird place because stuff like that happens. And it made me think things like that should be done whether anyone finds out about it or not.
Do you know what I mean? So you, I mean, one, one lesson you could take from that was, Oh, well, if I just sat still and all those kids have been squashed, at least I wouldn't have been told off. But I remember I, I don't, I didn't, I don't remember what I thought at the time, but it seems to me a good bargain that I'm quite happy to get told off.
I'm quite happy to get a minor telling off and to also know. That kids haven't been squashed. That's a good trade off as far as I'm concerned. So I dunno, I suppose it also means, I suppose that to generalize, it's like don't always rely on external rewards and incentives to do these things. Sometimes you need to just rely on your internal incentives, something like that.
Jaclyn: So, so I'm going to fast forward us a bit, uh, because I'm going to take us to current day and the work we're doing right now at kindness. org and specifically the work you've been leading for the past few years, using this word trade off, certainly something that, uh, I never fully understood, appreciated, and certainly didn't see how it would translate into building a kinder world, but just take a few minutes and walk us through the research we're doing.
Around this idea, kindness costs something and there's a trade off. How is that materializing both in the research and how you see it applying to people out in the real world?
Oliver: Okay. Just, just a, just a light interview then, is it? Um, um, sure, Jaclyn, I'll just summarize the whole several years work in an accessible way.
Um, so yeah. Okay. So I think the, the idea is that. I mean, in general, from first principles, everything, all behavior has some cost in terms of time and energy. And usually it's not difficult to explain why people would, it's not difficult to explain why people would pay a cost if they get, if they benefit from behaving in a particular way.
If you, the cost of walking across the room to the fridge is. outweighed by the benefit of the food you get from the fridge is not very difficult to explain. And obviously people put in more effort in order to achieve more reward. It gets a bit more complicated to explain why people would pay a cost to benefit others when they don't recoup that cost.
And that's what we mean by kindness. And we have lots of explanations for why that would be the case. If you're, if you're related, if you're on the same team, if you are investing in a reciprocal relationship, if you are showing that you are Brave and generous and other things. There's reason to explain why people would pay a cost to benefit others.
But where it gets interesting is that the, the, this ratio of costs to benefit varies for different people and different situations. And. Broadly speaking, you can, you can measure kindness as willing to pay a greater cost for a smaller benefit to others so that as it were, the kindest person will go to the ends of the earth to provide a tiny little benefit for you.
Whereas a, an average person would provide, would spend some energy to provide some benefit to you. And a mean person, an unkind person wouldn't, wouldn't do the slightest thing, wouldn't inconvenience themselves in the smallest degree, even if it was enormously beneficial to you. So this ratio of costs to benefits is a, is a sort of a very simple, but Powerful and effective way of capturing how kind someone is, what, how much they're willing to do for others at what cost and existing research prior to our stuff has shown that, um, Oh, and it allows you to put a very precise figure on how much, how kind they are or, or generous or altruistic or whatever it is you're talking about.
You can turn this ratio into, for example, a percentage. Which shows how much you care about another person, how much you value another person. So if you, if I, if my, if I value you at a hundred percent, it means I care about you as much as I care about myself. If I, if I value at 50%, then it's not zero. I still, I still put a substantial value on your welfare.
I still care about you, but I care about you, um, half as much as I care about myself and so on. And sometimes people care about others more than they care about themselves. If, for example, if a parent would, um, sacrifice their life. For their kids, they care about, they, they value their kids at 150%. They value their kids more than they value themselves.
And previous research suggests that, for example, people have a, uh, value, even complete strangers at about 30%. So again, it's not, it's not a hundred percent, but not, but nor is it zero. So they would, they would pay a, uh, uh, small to medium, small to moderate cost in order to provide a. moderate benefits to strangers.
Jaclyn: So for someone listening, it's like, okay, this is interesting. Fascinating. I'm learning something. Okay, great. Thinking percentages and how that applies to how I'm showing up and treating people. What, what is the practical application of not this knowledge? You know, how does this help us better understand people choosing kindness, not choosing kindness?
Tell us more about that.
Oliver: Okay. So the stranger bit dot, dot, dot. Um, and obviously people. care more about their, their friends and care even more about their family, for example. So they're willing to do more onerous, more challenging kind acts for people close to them. And one of the things we've One of the research projects we've done is we took, we took hundreds of kind acts ranging from put someone's birthday in your calendar, to recommend a book to them, to donate blood, to save, save someone from a burning building.
And we asked people to rate how costly and how beneficial these acts were so we could get the cost benefit ratio of these acts. And then we use that to measure people's kindness. Which of these acts would you do for whom? And again, We've again, we replicated the result that people were kinder to family than they were to friends and kinder to friends than they were to strangers and colleagues and acquaintances and things.
And so anyway, what this, we, but we can extract from their answers, what their percentage is, their, their, um, their kindness quotient is to others. And that, and I, with that sort of line, as it were with that, level of kindness, we can predict that they would do all the things that are above the line, but they wouldn't do it.
Or the other way around, they do all the things that are below the line that are within their, within their kindness capacity, but they wouldn't do any of the acts that would that were above that. So that's quite a cool thing to get a number that draws a line between across. Hundreds or thousands of different things you could do for others and allows us to predict what people would be comfortable doing for whom.
And one of the things we can, that enables us to do is move from, for example, random acts of kindness to recommended acts of kindness, uh, giving, given people's current kindness quotient, their current level of kindness to different, uh, different people in their lives. Um, we can use that to fine tune the sort of recommendations.
We might give them as to what to do next. So if there's someone, if you want to be kind to, you know, if you want to be kinder to strangers, kinder to strangers, you're probably starting at a lower level. And if you want to be kinder to a member of your family, so, so we can use this, this database and the questionnaire to, um, make tailored recommendations for different people.
under different circumstances.
Jaclyn: I'm loving this. So, okay. A lot of what you've helped the organization with is grounding the idea of kindness in science. And it's hopefully, um, helping change the somewhat societal narrative that kindness is fluffy, weak, feminine, soft, and you know, it's, uh, it's. Not reliable as a means to solve problems or it's not the way leaders should show up and and so We've really tried to invest into challenging that narrative, reshaping that narrative, um, and equipping people with an understanding of kindness, not just from our opinions, but or our beliefs, but from what the research shows us.
Uh, you and I began, we met around this idea, um, and it was the first research that we ever did together. So one, tell, tell me about the whole experience for you of coming into workwithkindness. org. What you. Well, first, what your impression was with the whole idea of kindness. And, uh, and then tell me about the research that you did with us, what you found and finally, how did it affect you?
And like, cause now you're here today with us. So just what was that journey like for you?
Oliver: Well, so just to start with, I think kindness is feminine and soft, but it's also masculine and hard and it's also feminine and hard and masculine and soft. And there's nothing wrong with it being. Some of it being, um, feminine and soft and all the other, uh, combinations.
So I forgot what the question was now. Do you want me to, do you want me to do our origin story? Um, well, I think when we first met, I thought it was, I thought it was quite, I don't know, kind of quite a paradoxical organization because, um, on the one hand it seemed kindness. org seemed on the face of it sort of quite.
I don't know, naive, idealistic, utopian, something like that. Um, but at the same token, I had enormous respect for the fact that your first order of business was to, was to do some science or to do a review of the literature, the scientific literature, um, a review that. became a meta analysis, which is a, as good a place to start as any.
I think that impression of paradoxical, quixotic, unlikely combination was furthered when, um, when we met. And I think we went, I think we went around the table and said, let's. The thing that makes British people, um, Blanche is when someone says, let's go around the table and say a few things about ourselves.
Um, uh, I think I get, I think I gave a robotic summary of my CV and then tried to shrink into my, into my jumper. And when it was your turn, you. Told us the story of how you were journaling on a journaling, on a beach, getting in touch with your inner chakras as the, as the sun went down and you realized the one word popped out of you from the page, which was kindness.
And you decided to devote your life to the rest of promoting kindness. And you were so pleased that we were all joining you on this journey. And I thought, Oh my God, where's the Kool Aid I need to get out of here. But the, but. They're commissioning me to do this research, so I'll just, I'll bite my tongue and carry on.
So yeah, that was our, that was our first meeting. And then I went away and with the rest of the team conducted this analysis and we decided to look at, I don't know, we decided to look at the sort of, uh, the, the best work on what seemed to be one of the sort of most surprising predictions, which was that helping others makes you happy.
So like I said, it's, it's easy to see why Helping yourself, getting what you want makes you happy. That's almost the definition of happiness. There were plenty of, as it were sensationalized. Media headlines saying that helping other people makes you happy. Paying a cost to benefit others makes you feel good, makes you happy, makes you, um, improves the satisfaction with your life.
So that seemed like a, I don't know, on the face of it, a surprising prediction, and we wanted to review that. I mean, if, if we'd done a review of does helping. make the recipient feel happy, it wouldn't have been particularly interesting because it wouldn't have been surprising if we found that yes, being helped, people appreciate being helped.
That wouldn't be particularly surprising. And in fact, there's not very, not much work on it for that reason. Um, so this idea that helping others makes you happy helps the. Makes the helper feel happy was what we looked at. And we did a systematic review, which means you run a few sophisticated searches.
And we identified, I can't remember, several, several hundred possible studies, experiments that had looked at whether people were happier helping themselves or helping others. And then you, you go, you read all this stuff and you narrow it down to whatever it was, a few dozen studies. And then you read through those in detail and you extract the relevant information, like how big was the study and how big was the, did they find an effect?
And was it, was it in support of this prediction or not? And then you add, you do some number crunching and get the aggregate result and. The, which I'll, I'm tentatively not mentioning just yet. Um, and it was quite an interesting experience for me because at first of all, I'd never done a meta analysis before, so that was quite a wild ride.
But, um, second of all, I went into it very skeptically thinking this is too good to be true and I'm really, it's going to be really, it's going to be really, um, painful process of disappointing these nice people. Uh, when I finally deliver the truth from on high, and certainly the first few papers I read were dreadful, was, were just kind of mostly wishful thinking.
There's one very prominent paper that didn't, that reported a positive result, but didn't have any stats in it at all. And didn't, didn't produce the evidence. So I was looking, thinking this is not going to go very well, but as the, as the review continued and the papers rolled in and we did, we sort of analyze them.
aggregated them properly, the, uh, I was, I was genuinely pleasantly surprised to see that there was indeed a result. There was indeed, uh, it was indeed the case that taken together on average, overall, these 20, 27 something studies, uh, together show that, that yes, helping makes you happy, doing some, doing a kind act for someone else makes you happier than if you, than if you did, did it for yourself.
And from my point of view, it was, um, it's a particularly effective way of. making yourself happy because you, as it were, get two for the price of one. You, you help, you make the recipient happier and you make yourself happier. So it's a, it's a win win. Afterwards, I kind of had to kick myself because I thought, well, hang on, why, why was I so surprised by this in the first place?
My own skepticism had taken over sort of my, My scientific skepticism and sort of suspicion about people's motives had combined to throw dust in my eyes because afterwards I thought, well, hang on, all of my research has been on how, for example, morality could evolve, how even something as ferocious as scrutinize as natural selection, as evolution by natural selection could favor altruism.
Um, it can favor all these different behaviors because it's to the mutual benefit of the. the creatures that participate in it. Um, so there, there is a benefit in investing in social relationships. Um, social relationships are ultimately rewarding down to the benefit of, um, the people in them. So from that point of view, it shouldn't be surprised.
It shouldn't have been surprising that, uh, uh, being kind to others, investing in relationships. feels good for the same reason that eating or having sex or, um, finding shelter or any other basic things makes you feel good. These are all meeting important, important life goals. Survive these, all these things promote survival and reproduction in a straightforward way.
And so does creating. A supportive social network.
Jaclyn: And thus began our working relationship together. So that, that paper was published. It's been cited hundreds of times. Definitely feels like it helps set an incredible. Dare I say gold standard for our understanding of kindness and well being, kindness and happiness.
And it also, um, motivated you to come dedicate your life to this and now contribute to our broader, deeper understanding of the science of kindness. And we're so happy about that. I'm so happy about that. Pepper us with a few. Now we're years into working together. So pepper us with a few of your favorite facts that you've discovered since diving deep into our understanding of kindness.
Um, why are we kind? What benefits does it offer us? Uh, yeah. Anything that stood out to you that you've discovered over these past few years in your role?
Oliver: Um, well, I try to keep track of these in, uh, Random facts of kindness. Hashtag random facts of kindness on Twitter has a couple of a hundred of these.
Um, I'm not going to remember them all off the top of my head. I don't know. Let's have a look. Um, the ones that are probably stuck out are adjacent to the thing to, to our meta analysis that helping makes you happy. There's been a whole bunch of other meta analyses that show that kindness and related things like forgiveness or gratitude or.
Generosity and other, other things like that are related to, or cause, or give life meaning. So you, some studies have looked at, do these things make you happy? Other studies have looked at, do these things give you a life purpose? Do these things give you a life meaning? Just, just kind of asking people. And a whole bunch of these studies have shown that, yeah, you know, this kindness is the meaning of, it's the secret to the meaning of life.
So of course, um, to have a happy, meaningful. purposeful, flourishing life, you have to get the basics covered. You have to eat, drink and be merry and everything. Um, but if you really want to push it over the top, then practicing the virtues seems like a surefire way to live a happy, contented, full, flourishing life.
Uh, so I think, I mean, I think seeing science gets stuck in and science isn't, you know, science is not all about. test tubes and atom bombs and things. Science just means putting things to the test. It just means asking what's the evidence for the, is there any evidence for this? What's the evidence? So seeing science not just get to grips with kindness, but to get to grips with the meaning of life, I think is very cool.
Jaclyn: I love it. I love it. I think it's very cool too. Okay. So for our audience, from the science perspective, scientist perspective, how do you define kindness?
Oliver: As a, as a Popperian, I don't like. Um, defining things, but what the way that we, the way that our kind of working hypothesis, um, has been to say that kindness, we talk about the ABCs of kindness.
So kindness is actions intended to benefit others at some cost to yourself. And if we were trying to be clever, we would say the A, B, C, D, E's of kindness. And the D is sort of deliberate and the E is, you know, with emotion, with a feeling.
Jaclyn: Well, on that note, we close our interviews with, um, like a round Robin of quick questions, so I'm just going to throw things out and you give your.
Quick response, gut reaction, whatever comes to your mind. Oliver, you can get every one in the world to do one kind act. What is that?
Oliver: Um, I don't know. Donate to give directly. I think that's what it is. Is there cash transfers to people who need it?
Jaclyn: Amazing. Okay. What book is on your Kindle or nightstand?
Oliver: Well, Books, plural, but which is at the top, um, there's, um, I dunno, there's one, uh, there's one called how to be, I'm reading something called how to be a geek dad at the moment.
Jaclyn: What's the one thing you want everyone to know about kindness?
Oliver: Um, you have a greater capacity for it than you realize, and you should experiment to find your own, the level at which you're comfortable.
It'd probably be higher than where you are now. And the science says you'll be glad you did.
Jaclyn: What's the most exciting research that you're looking forward to doing?
Oliver: Um, I would be great to look at the, the genetics of kindness. I'd like to do more. I'd like to take our kindness questionnaire global and do kind of, we've done United States of Kindness.
I'd like to do United Nations of Kindness. I'd like, I'm, I think it's going to be really interesting to see if we can tease apart these different, different flavors of kindness. Like I was, like I was mentioning before, we've done some great stuff on, kindness in the community and how that promotes a sense of community and satisfaction with your neighborhood and that kind of thing.
I think we have the opportunity to do, to really go large with that. I don't know, all of it.
Jaclyn: Love it. If kindness were an animal, what animal would it be?
Oliver: Um, a titi monkey. [laughter]
Jaclyn: Great. Um, and is there anything you want to say that you didn't get to say?
Oliver: I think I've said enough.
Jaclyn: Okay, okay. So we're going to close out and choose kindness.
Um, our wonderful friends over at Verizon are generously sponsoring this podcast and we're a part of a call for kindness campaign with them where we're trying to motivate people to answer the call for kindness. And, uh, it's been a multi year partnership and we're so excited about the impact that we've had spreading kindness, inspiring kindness, and motivating people to choose kindness with our.
research and work with them. So to close, I'd love to invite you to think about who you can call to let them know you're thinking about them. You're grateful for them. So we can call now together. You can commit to call. You could send a text if you're uncomfortable with calling, but we want to end by choosing kindness.
So what does that look like for you?
Oliver: Well, I mean, I could, I could text my wife, but is that cheating?
Jaclyn: No. Why? If, if letting her know great things about her, of course not. I think we all could use that inspiration and be reminded. See, I think that's actually illustrating something really interesting. It's like being kind to the person you love the most.
Shouldn't ever be cheating. It should be the thing we strive for. So I would say absolutely not.
Oliver: Okay. Oh, that's what I'll do then.
Jaclyn: Okay. We'll report back. We'll definitely want to hear more about it. Oliver, thank you for joining us today. This was. It's such a delightful conversation. And uh, even though I feel like I know so much, I still learn something new and that's always exciting.
So thank you for being with us and, uh, yeah, here's to a kinder world together.
Oliver: All right. Well, thanks again for having me. Look forward to our continuing journey together.
Jaclyn: Thank you so much for joining us on this week's episode of The Why Kindness Podcast, sponsored by our friends at Verizon to learn more about everything you heard today from our wonderful guests, definitely check out our show notes.
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