When we help others, we are only helping ourselves – a new study has proven this concept, showing that extending a helping hand to friends and strangers alike improves well-being pertaining to the effects of daily stress.
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Ansell teamed up with Elizabeth B. Raposa of UCLA and Yale University School of Medicine, and Holly B. Laws of Yale University School of Medicine to run a survey that required participants to report on daily experiences and feelings via their smartphones.
Every night during the 14-day study, each participant was asked to complete an assessment of their day, reporting any stressful life events that may have occurred, with the total number of events giving the researchers a measure of daily stress.
“Our research shows that when we help others we can also help ourselves”, Emily Ansell said.
For the study, the researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Yale University School of Medicine recruited 77 adults between the ages of 18 and 44. Good deeds didn’t have to be impressive – just holding the door for somebody or helping them with their grocery bags was enough to improve spirits.
‘It was surprising how strong and uniform the effects were across daily experiences, ‘ she said.
Each evening for two weeks, participants received a reminder to complete a series of questionnaires.
Helping others with even small tasks like holding open a door (stock image pictured) or carrying someone’s shopping for them could provide a way of coping with stress.
She said if further research could examine whether prompting people to help others could help their wellbeing, it could be potentially prescribed to those suffering with depression or stress. The experiment revealed that participants that reported helping others more often had higher levels of emotional well-being, were more optimistic, and their mental health was better than that of participants who were not as helpful. They also responded better to stress. “And there was only a slight increase in negative emotion from stress if the participant engaged in more prosocial behaviors”.
Dr Ansell said it appears helping others buffered the negative impacts of stress on well-being.
The research shows that the daily well being of people may be boosted by helping others. Their mental health was also less likely to be affected by daily stress. In the study people with lower-than-usual helping behavior reported that they had decreased positive emotion and increased negative emotion in response to high stress daily.
The researchers note that additional studies will be necessary to determine whether the findings hold across ethnically and culturally diverse populations.
They would like to determine whether intentionally promoting helping behavior as a way for people to improve their mood and mental health could be an avenue for mood and mental health improvement. A shorter form of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale was used to measure their experienced emotions.
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Another important finding entailed the people’s response to stress.
