Research into the Benefits of Serving Others

By Stephen Trzeciak, MD, and Anthony Mazzarelli, MD

Taking time for yourself is vitally important. Getting off the hamster wheel and slowing down are unequivocally good for you. We all need work-life balance, for sure. But the question is, what do we do in that respite time?

According to the National Institutes of Health, double the number of Americans (21 million) are doing yoga today than they were twenty years ago.¹ Eighteen million are meditating. The self-care message that mind-body practices can reduce stress has clearly been received. But so many self-care choices like yoga and meditation—as commonly practiced in America—are often solitary pursuits. In yoga class, your mat is your island. In a room full of people, you are alone in your breath, mind, and body. Same thing with app-style meditation. 

In terms of happiness and success, exclusively self-focused self-care is just not as effective as other-focused other-care. Looking outward, making human connections, serving others, and caring for others—the opposite of looking within-ward—has proven stress-relieving benefits. Science supports that a key to resilience is relationships. In decades past, we found uplift and resilience in our families, our friends, and our relationships.

Good Relationships Keep Us Happier 

In what is likely the longest-running scientific study ever conducted (eighty years and counting), the Harvard Study of Adult Development began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores, beginning in 1938 and checking in with them regularly over time. 

The researchers followed the trajectory of their lives, with the aim of identifying the key factors responsible for good health and happiness. Only a handful of the people initially enrolled in the study are still alive, but the results over the years paint a clear picture of the importance of human connection in health, vitality, and longevity.

Robert Waldinger, MD, the current study director and a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, summarized the findings in a TEDx Talk: “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier . . . and loneliness kills. When we gathered together everything we knew about [the study participants] at age fifty, it wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old, it was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age fifty were the healthiest at age eighty.”²

Meaningful relationships were not only the key for good health and longevity but also for the Grant Study subjects’ well-being. After decades of rigorous investigation, in what we think could be one of the best lines ever in academia, George Valliant, the study director for forty years, said, “The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the [Harvard] Grant Study points . . . to a straightforward five-word conclusion: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.”³

Meaningful human connection is protective. What is the mechanism by which human connection can impact our health? In short, being lonely causes a similar response in the body as being under extreme stress all the time. For example, it raises the level of the stress hormone cortisol circulating in the blood, and over time loneliness can lead to chronic systemic inflammation—a contributing factor leading to bad outcomes like cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Solitary pursuits, even well-intended ones, don’t necessarily strengthen relationships. Relational pursuits, like volunteering, joining, giving, helping, are prosocial. Prosocial behaviors, attitudes, and activities can lower stress and improve health and well-being, far more so than delving deeply and exclusively into the self by yourself.

Born to be Good

High on the list of life skills parents try to instill in their kids: “It’s fun to share!” It might not always seem like little humans are naturally inclined to play nice. We can think of some incidents at our own homes when our saying “Take turns!” might as well have been spoken in medieval French, for all the good it did. Children might be thought of as self-centered because they are exquisitely in touch with their needs and desires. But that does not mean they’re selfish. The evidence shows that kids as young as two get more joy from giving than they do from getting.

An illustrative study to support this was designed by a team of researchers led by Canadian social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn, PhD, at the University of British Columbia.⁴ For the experiment, the team brought twelve healthy toddlers under the age of two into their lab and introduced them to stuffed animal puppets. The toddlers were told that the puppets liked treats, and then the researcher fed them a Teddy Graham or a Goldfish cracker (“the toddler equivalent of gold,” Dunn said), while the research playacted the puppet making yummy sounds.

Once the toddlers and the puppets sufficiently bonded over their mutual love of Goldfish crackers, the researchers placed empty bowls in front of the kid and the toy. The child was given eight crackers and asked if they would like to share some of their treats with the puppet.

Throughout this process, experts on facial expressions watched the toddlers closely for their emotional response. The kids exhibited happiness when they received treats, but they demonstrated even more happiness when they gave their treats to the toys, especially when they removed a cracker out of their bowl and placed it into the puppet’s bowl themselves. The study concluded, “By documenting the emotionally rewarding properties of costly prosocial behavior among children in the second year of life, this research provides foundational support for the claim that experiencing positive emotions when giving to others is a proximate mechanism for human cooperation and pro-sociality.”

Toddlers were the perfect subjects for studying the inherent joy of “costly giving”—personal sacrifice. They were too young yet to be socialized about sharing, and blissfully ignorant of Me Culture influence. Their joy in giving away their own precious resources supports the idea that humans are born to serve others. We are hardwired to feel good about giving.

You Know What Happens When You Assume

An unfortunate universal truth of humankind is that we tend to make assumptions about others, including underestimating their altruism, falsely believing that they (whomever “they” are) aren’t as pure as we are. Negative assumptions are often based on stereotypes. For example: We assume one political party is more compassionate than the other.

The political climate in the United States couldn’t be more divided, in part because of the assumptions Democrats make about Republicans and vice versa. It’s only logical that, if you are a member of a political party, you ascribe to some of the ideology and values it upholds. The illogical part is assuming that, if your party is good and kind, then the other party must therefore be evil and cruel.

During the 2016 US presidential campaign, researchers at Pennsylvania State University set out to determine whether different political party members stereotyped each other about how compassionate they were. In five separate studies, some in person and online, respondents consistently stereotyped Democrats/liberals as being more compassionate than Republicans/conservatives. Democrats, by the way, were more extreme in this opinion than Republicans. However, when members of both parties were assessed on their own personal values and beliefs about compassion, the results were pretty much the same across the board. The research showed that, as individuals, Democrats were no more or less compassionate than Republicans. Perceived differences, not reality, exaggerated political stereotypes.⁵

Old-Timers Realize that Joy is Found in Serving Others

You might assume (knowing grandpa as you do) that older men are set in their ways and their curmudgeon quality is not going to change.

Not so fast! Research has found that giving behavior increases in old age. Apparently, after a lifetime of self-interest, old-timers realize that joy is found in serving others.

Ulrich Mayr, PhD, and his team at the University of Oregon used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines to scan the brains of eighty participants between the ages of twenty and sixty-four.⁶ For one experiment, money was withdrawn from the subjects’ personal bank accounts and moved into that of a charitable organization. For some, the cash transfer increased activity in the nucleus accumbens—the brain’s reward center. This mechanism occurred in 24 percent of the thirty-five and under subjects. But it happened for 75 percent of the fifty-five and older. Not only that, but the older participants were eager to give their money away to charity, volunteer to be studied for the experiment, and self-assess as agreeable and empathetic at a higher rate than their younger counterparts.

At sixty, people give a three times larger share of their income to charity compared to twentysomethings and are 50 percent more likely to volunteer to serve others, possibly because they have more money and time to spare.⁷ Mayr’s fMRI results show that the old-timers authentically enjoyed giving. Brain scans don’t lie. Despite how they might’ve behaved when they were younger, Mayr’s senior citizen participants were genuinely happy to give to people in need. 

For a Canadian study, researchers rounded up 648 older people who scored low on agreeableness and had them do three weeks of loving-kindness meditation or kind acts exercises.⁸ At a two-month follow-up, the subjects were tested again to see if their baseline agreeableness changed. Both the meditation and kindness exercises significantly reduced their depression, and increased life satisfaction. 

By learning how to be compassionate, gramps can have a brighter outlook on life. By being kind (and patient) with him, you will reap the benefits of altruism too. When we heed our human nature, our evolutionary imperative to give to others and help each other, we survive. If we are as giving as we were born to be, we thrive. If we can try to shift our low expectations about the kindness and compassion of others, we can become even more giving and grateful in return.

—

Stephen Trzeciak, MD, MPH, is a physician-scientist, professor, and chair of medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, and the chief of medicine at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, New Jersey. Trzeciak is a practicing intensivist and an NIH-funded clinical researcher with more than 120 publications in scientific journals.

Anthony Mazzarelli, MD, JD, MBE, is an emergency medicine physician and co-president & CEO of Cooper University Health Care, as well as the associate dean of clinical affairs for Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.

Well Being Journal adapted this excerpt from Wonder Drug by Stephen Trzeciak, MD, and Anthony Mazzarelli, MD. Copyright © 2022 by Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli and reprinted by permission of St Martin’s Publishing Group. More information about the book can be found at wonderdrugbook.com

References

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2. https://ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness.
3. Stossel S. “What Makes Us Happy Revisited.” The Atlantic. May 2013.
4. Aknin LB, et al. “Giving leads to happiness in young children.” PLoS One. 2012;7(6):e39211.
5. Scheffer J, et al. (2020) “Stereotypes about compassion across the political spectrum.” Emotion
6. https://The Conversation.com/do-people-become-more-selfless-as-they-age-130443.
7. Cutler SJ, et al. (March 2000) “Age differences in voluntary association memberships: Fact or artifact.” J Gerontol Series B 55(2):S98-S107.
8. Mongrain M, et al. (2018). “Acts of kindness reduce depression in individuals low on agreeableness.” Transl Issues Psychol Sci. 4(3):323-34.