Photo: Kelly Sikkema | Unsplash
People who perform random acts of kindness tend to underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it. And that could hold back many of us from doing nice things for others more often, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. The study comprised eight small experiments that varied in design and participants. In all the experiments, people doing the kind thing consistently underestimated how much it was appreciated. "People tend to think that what they are giving is kind of little, maybe it’s relatively inconsequential," said one of the study authors, Dr. Amit Kumar. "But recipients are less likely to think along those lines. They consider the gesture to be significantly more meaningful because they are also thinking about the fact that someone did something nice for them."
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