Feel Our Pain: Empathy and Moral Behavior

“It’s empathy that makes us help other people. It’s empathy that makes us moral.” The economist Paul Zak casually makes this comment in his widely watched TED talk about the hormone oxytocin, which he dubs the “moral molecule”. Zak quotes a number of behavioral studies to support his claim that oxytocin increases empathy and trust, which in turn increases moral behavior. If all humans regularly inhaled a few puffs of oxytocin through a nasal spray, we could become more compassionate and caring. It sounds too good to be true. And recent research now suggests that this overly simplistic view of oxytocin, empathy and morality is indeed too good to be true.

Many scientific studies support the idea that oxytocin is a major biological mechanism underlying the emotions of empathy and the formation of bonds between humans. However, inferring that these oxytocin effects in turn make us more moral is a much more controversial statement. In 2011, the researcher Carsten De Dreu and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands published the study Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism which studied indigenous Dutch male study subjects who in a blinded fashion self-administered either nasal oxytocin or a placebo spray. The subjects then answered questions and performed word association tasks after seeing photographic images of Dutch males (the “in-group”) or images of Arabs and Germans, the “out-group” because prior surveys had shown that the Dutch public has negative views of both Arabs/Muslims and Germans. To ensure that the subjects understood the distinct ethnic backgrounds of the target people shown in the images, they were referred to typical Dutch male names, German names (such as Markus and Helmut) or Arab names (such as Ahmed and Youssef).

Oxytocin increased favorable views and word associations but only towards in-group images of fellow Dutch males. The oxytocin treatment even had the unexpected effect of worsening the views regarding Arabs and Germans but this latter effect was not quite statistically significant. Far from being a “moral molecule”, oxytocin may actually increase ethnic bias in society because it selectively enhances certain emotional bonds. In a subsequent study, De Dreu then addressed another aspect of the purported link between oxytocin and morality by testing the honesty of subjects. The study Oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty showed that oxytocin increased cheating in study subjects if they were under the impression that dishonesty would benefit their group. De Dreu concluded that oxytocin does make us less selfish and care more about the interest of the group we belong to.

These recent oxytocin studies not only question the “moral molecule” status of oxytocin but raise the even broader question of whether more empathy necessarily leads to increased moral behavior, independent of whether or not it is related to oxytocin. The researchers Jean Decety and Jason Cowell at the University of Chicago recently analyzed the scientific literature on the link between empathy and morality in their commentary Friends or Foes: Is Empathy Necessary for Moral Behavior?, and find that the relationship is far more complicated than one would surmise. Judges, police officers and doctors who exhibit great empathy by sharing in the emotional upheaval experienced by the oppressed, persecuted and severely ill always end up making the right moral choices – in Hollywood movies. But empathy in the real world is a multi-faceted phenomenon and we use this term loosely, as Decety and Cowell point out, without clarifying which aspect of empathy we are referring to.

Decety and Cowell distinguish at least three distinct aspects of empathy:

1. Emotional sharing, which refers to how one’s emotions respond to the emotions of those around us. Empathy enables us to “feel” the pain of others and this phenomenon of emotional sharing is also commonly observed in non-human animals such as birds or mice.

2. Empathic concern, which describes how we care for the welfare of others. Whereas emotional sharing refers to how we experience the emotions of others, empathic concern motivates us to take actions that will improve their welfare. As with emotional sharing, empathic concern is not only present in humans but also conserved among many non-human species and likely constitutes a major evolutionary advantage.

3. Perspective taking, which – according to Decety and Cowell – is the ability to put oneself into the mind of another and thus imagine what they might be thinking or feeling. This is a more cognitive dimension of empathy and essential for our ability to interact with fellow human beings. Even if we cannot experience the pain of others, we may still be able to understand or envision how they might be feeling. One of the key features of psychopaths is their inability to experience the emotions of others. However, this does not necessarily mean that psychopaths are unable to cognitively imagine what others are thinking. Instead of labeling psychopaths as having no empathy, it is probably more appropriate to specifically characterize them as having a reduced capacity to share in the emotions while maintaining an intact capacity for perspective-taking.

In addition to the complexity of what we call “empathy”, we need to also understand that empathy is usually directed towards specific individuals and groups. De Dreu’s studies demonstrated that oxytocin can make us more pro-social as long as it benefits those who we feel belong to our group but not necessarily those outside of our group. The study Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses by Xu and colleagues at Peking University used fMRI brain imaging in Chinese and Caucasian study subjects and measured their neural responses to watching painful images. The study subjects were shown images of either a Chinese or a Caucasian face. In the control condition, the depicted image showed a face being poked with a cotton swab. In the pain condition, study subjects were shown a face of a person being poked with a needle attached to syringe. When the researchers measured the neural responses with the fMRI, they found significant activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) which is part of the neural pain circuit, both for pain we experience ourselves but also for empathic pain we experience when we see others in pain. The key finding in Xu’s study was that ACC activation in response to seeing the painful image was much more profound when the study subject and the person shown in the painful image belonged to the same race.

As we realize that the neural circuits and hormones which form the biological basis of our empathy responses are so easily swayed by group membership then it becomes apparent why increased empathy does not necessarily result in behavior consistent with moral principles. In his essay “Against Empathy“, the psychologist Paul Bloom also opposes the view that empathy should form the basis of morality and that we should unquestioningly elevate empathy to virtue for all:

“But we know that a high level of empathy does not make one a good person and that a low level does not make one a bad person. Being a good person likely is more related to distanced feelings of compassion and kindness, along with intelligence, self-control, and a sense of justice. Being a bad person has more to do with a lack of regard for others and an inability to control one’s appetites.”

I do not think that we can dismiss empathy as a factor in our moral decision-making. Bloom makes a good case for distanced compassion and kindness that does not arise from the more visceral emotion of empathy. But when we see fellow humans and animals in pain, then our initial biological responses are guided by empathy and anger, not the more abstract concept of distanced compassion. What we need is a better scientific and philosophical understanding of what empathy is. Empathic perspective-taking may be a far more robust and reliable guide for moral decision-making than empathic emotions. Current scientific studies on empathy often measure it as an aggregate measure without teasing out the various components of empathy. They also tend to underestimate that the relative contributions of the empathy components (emotion, concern, perspective-taking) can vary widely among cultures and age groups. We need to replace overly simplistic notions such as oxytocin = moral molecule or empathy = good with a more refined view of the complex morality-empathy relationship guided by rigorous science and philosophy.

 

References:

De Dreu, C. K., Greer, L. L., Van Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. J. (2011). Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(4), 1262-1266.

Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2014). Friends or Foes: Is Empathy Necessary for Moral Behavior?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(5), 525-537.

Shalvi, S., & De Dreu, C. K. (2014). Oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(15), 5503-5507.

Xu, X., Zuo, X., Wang, X., & Han, S. (2009). Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses. The Journal of Neuroscience, 29(26), 8525-8529.

 

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Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

 

 

 

 

 

De Dreu, C., Greer, L., Van Kleef, G., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. (2011). Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (4), 1262-1266 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1015316108

 

Decety J, & Cowell JM (2014). Friends or Foes: Is Empathy Necessary for Moral Behavior? Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 9 (5), 525-37 PMID: 25429304

 

Shalvi S, & De Dreu CK (2014). Oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111 (15), 5503-7 PMID: 24706799

 

Xu X, Zuo X, Wang X, & Han S (2009). Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 29 (26), 8525-9 PMID: 19571143

Moral Time: Does Our Internal Clock Influence Moral Judgments?

Does morality depend on the time of the day? The study “The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior” published in October of 2013 by Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac Smith suggested that people are more honest in the mornings, and that their ability to resist the temptation of lying and cheating wears off as the day progresses. In a series of experiments, Kouchaki and Smith found that moral awareness and self-control in their study subjects decreased in the late afternoon or early evening.  The researchers also assessed the degree of “moral disengagement”, i.e. the willingness to lie or cheat without feeling much personal remorse or responsibility, by asking the study subjects to respond to questions such as “Considering the ways people grossly misrepresent themselves, it’s hardly a sin to inflate your own credentials a bit” or “People shouldn’t be held accountable for doing questionable things when they were just doing what an authority figure told them to do” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Interestingly, the subjects who strongly disagreed with such statements were the most susceptible to the morning morality effect. They were quite honest in the mornings but significantly more likely to cheat in the afternoons. On the other hand, moral disengagers, i.e. subjects who did not think that inflating credentials or following questionable orders was a big deal, were just as likely to cheat in the morning as they were in the afternoons.

 

Understandably, the study caused quite a bit of ruckus and became one of the most widely discussed psychology research studies in 2013, covered widely by blogs and newspapers such as the Guardian “Keep the mornings honest, the afternoons for lying and cheating” or the German Süddeutsche Zeitung “Lügen erst nach 17 Uhr” (Lying starts at 5 pm). And the findings of the study also raised important questions: Should organizations and businesses take the time of day into account when assigning tasks to employees which require high levels of moral awareness?  How can one prevent the “moral exhaustion” in the late afternoon and the concomitant rise in the willingness to cheat?  Should the time of the day be factored into punishments for unethical behavior?

One question not addressed by Kouchaki and Smith was whether the propensity to become dishonest in the afternoons or evenings could be generalized to all subjects or whether the internal time in the subjects was also a factor. All humans have an internal body clock – the circadian clock- which runs with a period of approximately 24 hours. The circadian clock controls a wide variety of physical and mental functions such as our body temperature, the release of hormones or our levels of alertness. The internal clock can vary between individuals, but external cues such as sunlight or the social constraints of our society force our internal clocks to be synchronized to a pre-defined external time which may be quite distinct from what our internal clock would choose if it were to “run free”. Free-running internal clocks of individuals can differ in terms of their period (for example 23.5 hours versus 24.4 hours) as well as the phases of when individuals would preferably engage in certain behaviors. Some people like to go to bed early, wake up at 5 am or 6 am on their own even without an alarm clock and they experience peak levels of alertness and energy before noon. In contrast to such “larks”, there are “owls” among us who prefer to go to bed late at night, wake up at 11 am, experience their peak energy levels and alertness in the evening hours and like to stay up way past midnight.

It is not always easy to determine our “chronotype” – whether we are “larks”, “owls” or some intermediate thereof – because our work day often imposes its demands on our internal clocks. Schools and employers have set up the typical workday in a manner which favors “larks”, with work days usually starting around 7am – 9am. In 1976, the researchers Horne and Östberg developed a Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire to investigate what time of the day individuals would prefer to wake up, work or take a test if it was entirely up to them. They found that roughly 40% of the people they surveyed had an evening chronotype!

If Kouchaki and Smith’s findings that cheating and dishonesty increases in the late afternoons applies to both morning and evening chronotype folks, then the evening chronotypes (“owls”) are in a bit of a pickle. Their peak performance and alertness times would overlap with their propensity to be dishonest. The researchers Brian Gunia, Christopher Barnes and Sunita Sah therefore decided to replicate the Kouchaki and Smith study with one major modification: They not only assessed the propensity to cheat at different times of the day, they also measured the chronotypes of the study participants. Their recent paper “”The Morality of Larks and Owls: Unethical Behavior Depends on Chronotype as Well as Time of Day” confirms that Kouchaki and Smith findings that the time of the day influences honesty, but the observed effects differ among chronotypes.

After assessing the chronotypes of 142 participants (72 women, 70 men; mean age 30 years), the researchers randomly assigned them to either a morning session (7:00 to 8:30 am) or an evening session (12:00 am to 1:30 am). The participants were asked to report the outcome of a die roll; the higher the reported number, the more raffle tickets they would receive for a large prize, which served as an incentive to inflate the outcome of the roll. Since a die roll is purely random, one would expect that reported average of the die roll results would be similar across all groups if all participants were honest. Their findings: Morning people (“larks”) tended to report higher die-roll numbers in the evening than in the morning – thus supporting the Kouchaki and Smith results- but evening people tended to report higher numbers in the morning than in the evening. This means that the morning morality effect and the idea of “moral exhaustion” towards the end of the day cannot be generalized to all. In fact, evening people (“owls”) are more honest in the evenings.

Not so fast, say Kouchaki and Smith in a commentary published to together with the new paper by Gunia and colleagues. They applaud the new study for taking the analysis of daytime effects on cheating one step further by considering the chronotypes of the participants, but they also point out some important limitations of the newer study. Gunia and colleagues only included morning and evening people in their analysis and excluded the participants who reported an intermediate chronotype, i.e. not quite early morning “larks” and not true “owls”. This is a valid criticism because newer research on chronotypes by Till Roenneberg and his colleagues at the University of Munich has shown that there is a Gaussian distribution of chronotypes. Few of us are extreme larks or extreme owls, most of us lie on a continuum.  Roenneberg’s approach to measuring chronotypes looks at the actual hours of sleep we get and distinguishes between our behaviors on working days and weekends because the latter may provide a better insight into our endogenous clock, unencumbered by the demands of our work schedule. The second important limitation identified by Kouchaki and Smith is that Gunia and colleagues used 12 am to 1:30 am as the “evening condition”. This may be the correct time to study the peak performance of extreme owls and selected night shift workers but ascertaining cheating behavior at this hour is not necessarily relevant for the general workforce.

Neither the study by Kouchaki and Smith nor the new study by Gunia and colleagues provide us with a definitive answer as to how the external time of the day (the time according to the sun and our social environment) and the internal time (the time according to our internal circadian clock) affect moral decision-making. We need additional studies with larger sample sizes which include a broad range of participants with varying chronotypes as well as studies which assess moral decision-making not just at two time points but also include a range of time points (early morning, afternoon, late afternoon, evening, night, etc.). But the two studies have opened up a whole new area of research and their findings are quite relevant for the field of experimental philosophy, which uses psychological methods to study philosophical questions. If empirical studies are conducted with human subjects then researchers need to take into account the time of the day and the internal time and chronotype of the participants, as well as other physiological differences between individuals.

The exchange between Kouchaki & Smith and Gunia & colleagues also demonstrates the strength of rigorous psychological studies. Researcher group 1 makes a highly provocative assertion based on their data, researcher group 2 partially replicates it and qualifies it by introducing one new variable (chronotypes) and researcher group 1 then analyzes strengths and weaknesses of the newer study. This type of constructive criticism and dialogue is essential for high-quality research. Hopefully, future studies will be conducted to provide more insights into this question. By using the Roenneberg approach to assess chronotypes, one could potentially assess a whole continuum of chronotypes – both on working days and weekends – and also relate moral reasoning to the amount of sleep we get. Measurements of body temperature, hormone levels, brain imaging and other biological variables may provide further insight into how the time of day affects our moral reasoning.

Why is this type of research important? I think that realizing how dynamic moral judgment can be is a humbling experience. It is easy to condemn the behavior of others as “immoral”, “unethical” or “dishonest” as if these are absolute pronouncements. Realizing that our own judgment of what is considered ethical or acceptable can vary because of our internal clock or the external time of the day reminds us to be less judgmental and more appreciative of the complex neurobiology and physiology which influence moral decision-making. If future studies confirm that the internal time (and possibly sleep deprivation) influences moral decision-making, then we need to carefully rethink whether the status quo of forcing people with diverse chronotypes into a compulsory 9-to-5 workday is acceptable. Few, if any, employers and schools have adapted their work schedules to accommodate chronotype diversity in human society. Understanding that individualized work schedules for people with diverse chronotypes may not only increase their overall performance but also increase their honesty might serve as another incentive for employers and schools to recognize the importance of chronotype diversity among individuals.

References:

Brian C. Gunia, Christopher M. Barnes and Sunita Sah (2014) “The Morality of Larks and Owls: Unethical Behavior Depends on Chronotype as Well as Time of Day“, Psychological Science (published online ahead of print on Oct 6, 2014).

Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac H. Smith (2014) “The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior“, Psychological Science 25(1) 95–102.

Till Roenneberg, Anna Wirz-Justice and Martha Merrow. (2003) “Life between clocks: daily temporal patterns of human chronotypes.” Journal of Biological Rhythms 18:1: 80-90.

 

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

 

Gunia BC, Barnes CM, & Sah S (2014). The Morality of Larks and Owls: Unethical Behavior Depends on Chronotype as Well as Time of Day. Psychological science PMID: 25287664

Is Kindness Key to Happiness and Acceptance for Children?

The study “Kindness Counts: Prompting Prosocial Behavior in Preadolescents Boosts Peer Acceptance and Well-Being” published by Layous and colleagues in the journal PLOS One on December 26, 2012 was cited by multiple websites as proof of how important it is to teach children to be kind. NPR commented on the study in the blog post “Random Acts Of Kindness Can Make Kids More Popular“, and the study was also discussed in ScienceDaily in “Kindness Key to Happiness and Acceptance for Children“, Fox News in “No bullies: Kind kids are most popular” and the Huffington Post in “Kind Kids Are Happier And More Popular (STUDY)“.

According to most of these news reports, the design of the study was rather straightforward. Schoolchildren ages 9 to 11 in a Vancouver school district were randomly assigned to two groups for a four week intervention: Half of the children were asked to perform kind acts, while the other half were asked to keep track of pleasant places they visited. Happiness and acceptance by their peers was assessed at the beginning and the end of the four week intervention period. The children were allowed to choose the “acts of kindness” or the “pleasant places”. The “acts of kindness” group chose acts such as sharing their lunch or giving their mothers a hug. The “pleasant places” group chose to visit places such as the playground or a grandparent’s house.

At the end of the four week intervention, both groups of children showed increased signs of happiness, but the news reports differed in terms of the impact of the intervention on the acceptance of the children.

 

The NPR blog reported:

… the children who performed acts of kindness were much more likely to be accepting of their peers, naming more classmates as children they’d like to spend time with.

This would mean that the children performing the “acts of kindness” were the ones that became more accepting of others.

 

The conclusion in the Huffington Post was quite different:

 

The students were asked to report how happy they were and identify classmates they would like to work with in school activities. After four weeks, both groups said they were happier, but the kids who had performed acts of kindness reported experiencing greater acceptance from their peers  –  they were chosen most often by other students as children the other students wanted to work with.

The Huffington Post interpretation (a re-post from Livescience) was that the children performing the “acts of kindness” became more accepted by others, i.e. more popular.

 

Which of the two interpretations was the correct one? Furthermore, how significant were the improvements in happiness and acceptance?

 

I decided to read the original PLOS One paper and I was quite surprised by what I found:

The manuscript (in its published form, as of December 27, 2012) had no figures and no tables in the “Results” section. The entire “Results” section consisted of just two short paragraphs. The first paragraph described the affect and happiness scores:

 

Consistent with previous research, overall, students in both the kindness and whereabouts groups showed significant increases in positive affect (γ00 = 0.15, S.E. = 0.04, t(17) = 3.66, p<.001) and marginally significant increases in life satisfaction (γ00 = 0.09, S.E. = 0.05, t(17) = 1.73, p = .08) and happiness (γ00 = 0.11, S.E. = 0.08, t(17) = 1.50, p = .13). No significant differences were detected between the kindness and whereabouts groups on any of these variables (all ps>.18). Results of t-tests mirrored these analyses, with both groups independently demonstrating increases in positive affect, happiness, and life satisfaction (all ts>1.67, all ps<.10).

 

There are no actual values given, so it is difficult to know how big the changes are. If a starting score is 15, then a change of 1.5 is only a 10% change. On the other hand, if the starting score is 3, then a change of 1.5 represents a 50% change. The Methods section of the paper also does not describe the statistics employed to analyze the data. Just relying on arbitrary p-value thresholds is problematic, but if one were to use the infamous p-value threshold of 0.05 for significance, one can assume that there was a significant change in the affect or mood of children (p-value <0.001), a marginally significant trend of increased life satisfaction (p-value of 0.08) and no really significant change in happiness (p-value of 0.13).

It is surprising that the authors do not show the actual scores for each of the two groups. After all, one of the goals of the study was to test whether performing “acts of kindness” has a bigger impact on happiness and acceptance than the visiting “pleasant places” (“whereabouts” group). There is a generic statement “ No significant differences were detected between the kindness and whereabouts groups on any of these variables (all ps>.18).”, but what were the actual happiness and satisfaction scores for each of the groups? The next sentence is also cryptic: “Results of t-tests mirrored these analyses, with both groups independently demonstrating increases in positive affect, happiness, and life satisfaction (all ts>1.67, all ps<.10).” Does this mean that p<0.1 was the threshold of significance? Do these p-values refer to the post-intervention versus pre-intervention analysis for each tested variable in each of the two groups? If yes, why not show the actual data for both groups?

 

The second (and final) paragraph of the Results section described acceptance of the children by their peers. Children were asked who they would like to “would like to be in school activities [i.e., spend time] with’’:

 

All students increased in the raw number of peer nominations they received from classmates (γ00 = 0.68, S.E. = 0.27, t(17) = 2.37, p = .02), but those who performed kind acts (M = +1.57; SD = 1.90) increased significantly more than those who visited places (M = +0.71; SD = 2.17), γ01 = 0.83, S.E. = 0.39, t(17) = 2.10, p = .05, gaining an average of 1.5 friends. The model excluded a nonsignificant term controlling for classroom size (p = .12), which did not affect the significance of the kindness term. The effects of changes in life satisfaction, happiness, and positive affect on peer acceptance were tested in subsequent models and all found to be nonsignificant (all ps>.54). When controlling for changes in well-being, the effect of the kindness condition on peer acceptance remained significant. Hence, changes in well-being did not predict changes in peer acceptance, and the effect of performing acts of kindness on peer acceptance was over and above the effect of changes in well-being.

 

This is again just a summary of the data, and not the actual data itself. Going to “pleasant places” increased the average number of “friends” (I am not sure I would use “friend” to describe someone who nominates me as a potential partner in a school activity) by 0.71, performing “acts of kindness” increased the average number of friends by 1.57. It did answer the question that was raised by the conflicting news reports. According to the presented data, the “acts of kindness” kids were more accepted by others and there was no data on whether they also became more accepting of others. I then looked at the Methods section to understand the statistics and models used for the analysis and found that there were no details included in the paper. The Methods section just ended with the following sentences:

 

Pre-post changes in self-reports and peer nominations were analyzed using multilevel modeling to account for students’ nesting within classrooms. No baseline condition differences were found on any outcome variables. Further details about method and results are available from the first author.

 

Based on reviewing the actual paper, I am quite surprised that PLOS One accepted it for publication. There are minimal data presented in the paper, no actual baseline scores regarding peer acceptance or happiness, incomplete methods and the rather grand title of “Kindness Counts: Prompting Prosocial Behavior in Preadolescents Boosts Peer Acceptance and Well-Being” considering the marginally significant data. One is left with many unanswered questions:

1) What if kids had not been asked to perform additional “acts of kindness” or additional visits to “pleasant places” and had instead merely logged these positive activities that they usually performed as part of their routine? This would have been a very important control group.

2) Why did the authors only show brief summaries of the analyses and omit to show all of the actual affect, happiness, satisfaction and peer acceptance data?

3) Did the kids in both groups also become more accepting of their peers?

 

It is quite remarkable that going to places one likes, such as a shopping mall is just as effective pro-social behavior (performing “acts of kindness”) in terms of improving happiness and well-being. The visits to pleasant places also helped gain peer acceptance, just not quite as much as performing acts of kindness. However, the somewhat selfish sounding headline “Hanging out at the mall makes kids happier and a bit more popular” is not as attractive as the warm and fuzzy headline “Random acts of kindness can make kids more popular“. This may be the reason why the “prosocial” or “kindness” aspect of this study was emphasized so strongly by the news media.

 

In summary, the limited data in this published paper suggests that children who are asked to intentionally hang out at places they like and keep track of these for four weeks seem to become happier, similar to kids who make an effort to perform additional acts of kindness. Both groups of children gain acceptance by their peers, but the children who perform acts of kindness fare slightly better. There are no clear descriptions of the statistical methods, no actual scores for the two groups (only the changes in scores are shown) and important control groups (such as children who keep track of their positive activities, without increasing them) are missing. Therefore, definitive conclusions cannot be drawn from these limited data. Unfortunately, none of the above-mentioned news reports highlighted the weaknesses, and instead jumped on the bandwagon of interpreting this study as scientific evidence for the importance of kindness. Some of the titles of the news reports even made references to bullying, even though bullying was not at all assessed in the study.

This does not mean that we should discourage our children from being kind. On the contrary, there are many moral reasons to encourage our children to be kind, and there is no need for a scientific justification for kindness. However, if one does invoke science as a reason for kindness, it should be based on scientifically rigorous and comprehensive data.