This experiment investigates the effects of kindness activities on changes in subjective happiness. In designing this study we were specifically interested in whether performing different types of kindness activities had differential effects on happiness. A recent meta-analysis of ours (Curry, Rowland, et al. 2018) reveals that performing acts of kindness does boost happiness and well-being; however, we noted in that review that rarely had researchers specifically tested the effect of acts of kindness within different types of giver-receiver dyads. As we point out, there are reasons to postulate that happiness may be differentially affected by the relationship between givers and receivers of kindness, and thus the present study sought to address this question.
In the files section below can be found the suggested acts of kindness, the study instructions, the study data, the study analysis scripts and outputs, and a table of the reported data.
