Small acts of kindness at work benefit the giver, the receiver and the whole organisation

By Alex Fradera In the lab, psychologists have shown how generosity propagates and spreads. If someone is kind to us, we tend to “pay it forward” and act more generously to someone else when given the chance. But it’s not clear if these findings are realistic. For example, when we’re juggling priorities on a busy work day, might receiving an act of kindness actually be a nuisance, leaving us feeling indebted to return the favour when we’ve got more important things to do? An uplifting new study in the journal Emotion looks at acts of altruism within a real-life working environment, and shows how kindness really does ripple outwards from a good deed. The researchers from the University of California headed by Joseph Chancellor studied workers from Coca Cola’s Madrid site, a group of mostly female employees from a range of departments. Participants were told they were part of a happiness study, and once a week for four weeks they checked in to report how they were feeling, in terms of mood and life satisfaction, and their experience of positive and negative behaviours, including how many they had carried out towards others, and how many others had made towards them. Four weeks later, the participants completed further measures, such as of their happiness and job satisfaction. Unbeknownst to most of the group, 19 of the participants were in cahoots with the researchers: they were “givers” whose task each week was to perform acts of kindness towards som...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Occupational Source Type: blogs