Surprising Things You Think Are Making You Happy—But Are Doing the Opposite

Now, a new study suggests another potential gain from forgiving others: It may decrease our paranoia—something that could otherwise keep us locked into patterns of distrust and isolation.

In a series of experiments, researchers measured forgiveness and paranoia. In one, for example, participants completed a questionnaire measuring their tendency toward forgiving others that asked how much they agree with statements like, “I continue to punish a person who has done something I think is wrong” or “Although others have hurt me in the past, I have eventually been able to see them as good people.”

Three days later and ten days later, researchers asked participants to recall a pleasant and difficult social experience they’d had recently, and to rate how stressed and paranoid they felt after each experience. Difficult social experiences included things like not being invited to a friend’s party, being treated rudely by a store clerk, or fighting with a colleague about work issues. Ratings of paranoia came from asking people how much they agreed with statements like “Someone has it in for me” or “Someone would have harmed me if they could.”

After analyzing the results, the researchers found that all participants had higher levels of paranoia and stress for unpleasant events than for pleasant events—no surprise there. However, those who were more forgiving types experienced lower stress and paranoia in those difficult situations than people who were less forgiving.

“These findings add dispositional forgiveness to the range of psychological resources that buffer or attenuate paranoia,” write the authors.

Though the results imply a positive role for forgiveness, it’s hard to know whether more paranoid people are less forgiving or people reluctant to forgive become more paranoid. To get at this, the researchers performed another experiment in which they tried to encourage people to take on a more forgiving mindset.

Since there is no quick, easy way to do this—forgiving others can actually take a lot of effort and time—they used a proxy activity. Participants filled out a questionnaire created by the authors that supposedly measured their forgiveness tendencies, then were randomly told that they’d scored either above or below average on their willingness to forgive others who’d harmed them. After being asked to write an essay explaining why they scored the way they did, they filled out actual, scientifically validated forgiveness surveys, which indicated if they’d absorbed this view of themselves as more or less forgiving people.

Next, they were given the paranoia survey to see if being forgiving affected their scores. Those prompted to feel more forgiving scored lower on the paranoia survey than their less forgiving counterparts. This suggests that encouraging a forgiving mindset may help us avoid overreacting to harm from others.

“We conceptually replicated and extended [our] findings by demonstrating, for the first time, that forgiveness exerts a causal effect on (reduced) paranoia,” the researchers write.

Of course, it’s important that forgiveness not be coerced and that people who have harmed you aren’t simply “let off the hook.” Researchers often emphasize that forgiveness is more about personal well-being for the person who was harmed—and that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to reconcile with someone or preclude you from seeking justice.

So, if you are withholding forgiveness, it may mean you are also holding on to paranoia, making it difficult to trust others’ motivations in everyday life. If so, it could be useful to consider the work of forgiving others—not just for your own mental health, but to prevent you taking out your pain on other people.

When we talk to strangers, if we talk to them, we often default to “small talk” or “chit-chat.” We may muse about the weather or a recent movie or what we did over the weekend. This surface-level talk may keep us comfortable, but it’s often unfulfilling.

What prevents us from deepening our conversations with strangers?

A recent study by Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar, and Nicholas Epley published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyfinds that we tend to underestimate how much strangers are interested in and care about our more personal revelations. They also mistakenly assume that conversations with strangers will be uncomfortable and unrewarding. These miscalibrated expectations create a psychological barrier that prevents us from having more “deep talk.”

The study raises a question for all of us: What if we took more chances in connecting with strangers?

Asking the big questions

In the study’s first set of experiments, the researchers told participants that they would answer and discuss four deep questions with a stranger, like, “For what in your life do you feel most grateful?” and “Can you describe a time you cried in front of another person?”

After reading the questions, but before meeting their randomly assigned conversation partner, participants predicted how interested they would be in hearing the other person’s answers, how interested they expected the other person would be in hearing their answers, how awkward they would feel during the conversation, how much they would like the other person, and how happy they would feel about the conversation. After 10 minutes spent discussing the deep questions with their partner, participants answered questions about how the conversation actually went.

Overall, participants weren’t very good at predicting how the conversation would go. They underestimated how interested they and their conversation partner would be in each other’s answers, as well as how connected and happy they’d feel afterward. They also overestimated the awkwardness of the conversation.

“Not only does having a deep conversation with another person seem to be a surprisingly positive experience, it seems to be more positive than having a shallow conversation,” write the researchers.

The researchers hypothesized that the reason people have such a tendency to avoid deeper conversations with strangers is because they believe strangers won’t care about their answers or find them interesting.

Experiments bore this out. For example, in one experiment participants were able to choose from a list of shallower and deeper questions to answer with a stranger. Participants who were told beforehand that people tend to underestimate how much strangers will care about each other’s answers selected significantly more of the deeper questions than did participants who were told people tend to overestimate the caring of strangers.

Throughout the experiments in this study, a simple theme emerged: Our expectations about how conversations with strangers will go often run in a negative direction. Unfortunately, these assumptions likely govern how we interact with people we don’t know well in our day-to-day lives. As the researchers write:

Our data suggest that underestimating others’ deeply social nature—assuming that others will be more indifferent and uncaring in conversation that they actually are—could help to explain why conversations in daily life are shallower than people might prefer. Our participants consistently expected their conversations to be more awkward, and lead to weaker connections and less happiness than they actually did.

What strangers can give us

What’s unknown is to what extent these findings are generalizable. Although the experiments in this study included a range of different groups—American undergraduate and master’s students, financial services employees, international MBA students, community members in a park, and online participants—most of the experiments were conducted in the United States. So, it remains to be seen if the same results would be found in other cultures.

Here’s another open question: Do impromptu conversations with strangers differ from conversations prompted by experimenters? As the researchers acknowledge, it’s a lot easier to engage in deeper conversations when instructed to do so. And because “small talk” is a social norm in many settings, trying to engage in a more intimate conversation in the “real world” may make some people wonder if you’re angling for a date or trying to sell them something.

But other studies in more naturalistic settings suggest that we frequently make false assumptions about how interactions with strangers will likely go. In a study of train and bus commuters, people predicted that they would have a more positive experience keeping to themselves than while talking with a stranger, when the opposite was actually true. In another study, people instructed to give a compliment to a stranger overestimated how uncomfortable and bothered—and underestimated how positive—the compliment recipient would feel. And a study that included pairs of new dorm mates and strangers at a workshop found a robust “liking gap” between how much people thought strangers liked them after a conversation and how much they actually did.

Together, these studies show that we may benefit from experimenting with talking to strangers even when we don’t feel like it—and consider moving beyond small talk when we do engage in these conversations.

“If you think that a deep conversation is likely to be especially awkward, then you are unlikely to give yourself the chance to find out that you might be a little bit wrong,” write the researchers. “Only by engaging with others do people accurately understand the consequences of doing so.”

There’s another possible benefit from deepening our conversations with strangers: feeling more socially connected and even maybe gaining more friends. After all, all friends were strangers at one point, and studies have found that “deep talk” speeds up the formation of friendships.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we need to go straight for the vulnerability jugular, exposing our worst fear or past traumas while ordering a cup of coffee. Instead, we may consider asking gradually more intimate questions—or disclosing more vulnerable information about ourselves—the next time we have the opportunity to have an extended conversation with a stranger.

In fact, in this study, the researchers noticed that some pairs assigned to discuss shallow questions eventually gravitated to deeper topics, suggesting there may be a natural drive to increasing intimacy over the course of a conversation.

So if you see yourself veering toward more vulnerable territory the next time you talk to your seatmate on a plane, consider using this study as a reason to give in to the impulse. You might just walk away with a new friend—or at least feel happier and more connected than you expected.

Photo by August de Richelieu on Pexels.com

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm of the day:

Sometimes the best Conversation
you ever could have
is the one
you never saw 
h a p p e n i n g.          .          .

The best way to take the
C  O  N
out of Conversation
is this simple:
TALK IT UP

If you commute on a bus or train, you’ve probably noticed that most people spend the ride looking at their cell phones. No doubt, they assume doing nothing but sit there would be boring, so they prefer distracting themselves. This squares with past research showing people will do almost anything to avoid boredom—even administer electric shocks to themselves.To

But results from new research suggest we should rethink that choice. We are probably underestimating how enjoyable and interesting it is to do nothing but pay attention to wherever our thoughts take us.

In a series of experiments, researchers brought Japanese university students into a lab and told them that they would soon be going into a room without their belongings to wait and do nothing but sit for 20 minutes. They were further instructed that, while waiting, they could think about anything they wanted to, but were not allowed to sleep, walk, or exercise; look at a smartphone; or consult a watch.

Before entering the room, they were asked to predict how much they’d enjoy waiting and thinking, how interesting or boring it would be, and how much it would engage them so that they’d lose track of time. Then, they went in the room to wait. Afterward, they reported how waiting actually felt—how engaging, pleasurable, interesting, or boring it was. (In some variations of the experiment, they waited in a dark room without any stimulation.)

Either way, researchers found that the participants were not good at predicting how much they’d enjoy doing nothing but think. Even in a dark room with no stimulation, they ended up being more engaged and interested than they’d anticipated.

“People don’t appreciate the real value of waiting/thinking,” says researcher Kou Murayama of the Motivation Science Lab at the University of Tübingen in Germany and coauthor of the study. “Once they engage in it, though, they appreciate it.”

To test this idea further, Murayama and his colleagues recruited another group of students and repeated the experiment. But first they asked students whether they’d rather have a 75% chance of being in a room without any stimulation or with a computer they could use to check the news. Not surprisingly, most students wanted the latter and predicted they’d enjoy waiting more if they had computer access.

Then, the researchers randomly assigned students to have a computer in the room or not and asked them to report afterward how the experience went. Despite predictions, there were no significant differences between those who waited with or without a computer; both groups liked the experience equally.

Why would this be? The students didn’t report on their actual thoughts, so it’s hard to know exactly where their minds went. But spontaneous thinking often involves mind-wandering, daydreaming, thinking about the future, or recollecting memories, all of which can have upsides. For example, daydreaming and mind-wandering have been found to improve our mood, creativity, goal-setting, and job performance (especially during a repetitive task). And thinking about the past in a nostalgic (rather than ruminative) way can make us happier and more resilient to stress.

Though it’s hard to know if these results with students would apply to the rest of us, Murayama did at least compare German students to Japanese students and found both groups underestimated the pleasure of waiting to a similar degree. This implies that it’s not necessarily a culturally-driven phenomenon, though more research would need to be done to verify that.

Overall, says Murayama, the results suggest we rethink whipping out our cell phones every time we are waiting or bored. Instead, we might benefit from having a moment to think freely about whatever catches our fancy—and enjoy ourselves just as much.

“If you find yourself checking mobile phones when there is nothing to do, try to take a moment to entertain yourself with thinking,” advises Murayama. “You may have new refreshing experiences that you did not expect.”

Have you ever regretted something you did or didn’t do in life?

If you’ve lived a long life, you probably carry many regrets, large and small. Some of my own regrets relate to my career (why did I never become a teacher and a basketball coach; a full-fledge writer), past relationships (why did I lose a good friend over a small disagreement), and parenting (why didn’t I respond instead of react well to my kid’s worries and unmet expectations?). No matter the regret, it’s hard not to wonder how things might have turned out if I’d only made a different—and better—choice at the time.  I thought I was reading this book to help some of the patients I families I meet every day in the hospice setting.   .    .well.     .     .

Ruminating on past mistakes is a downer and can lead to depression or anxiety if it continues unabated. But a new book by psychologist Robert Leahy, If Only…Finding Freedom from Regret, suggests that regrets don’t always have to bog you down. If you understand how regrets work, recognize their effect on your decision making, and find ways to manage life’s inevitable disappointments, you can suffer less from regret and, instead, use your regrets as helpful guideposts for your life.

“Regret is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to take over and hijack you,” he writes.

The nature of regret

Regret can come in different forms—for something we did (like overeating or hurting our loved one) or something we didn’t do (like not graduating from college or not asking someone out on a date). Most people have a mixture of both types, though the latter tends to make us feel worse, writes Leahy.

According to research, the most common sources of regret involve our education, career, romance, and parenting (in that order). That’s because we tend to regret things that reflect bigger concerns and opportunities in life, rather than what we ate for breakfast.

Culture can affect how people experience regret, too, with people from more individualistic cultures usually having more regrets about their personal situation (like achievement or career) and those in collectivist cultures having more regrets about their relationships. And women and men differ some in how they experience regret, with women typically regretting romantic and sexual relationships more than men and men regretting inaction more than action.

Regret is associated with unpleasant emotions, like sadness, disappointment, guilt, and shame. But people also regard it as one of the most beneficial negative emotions, because it can be instructive. For example, if we regret how we behaved the last time we drank too much, we’re less likely to order a third round the next time we’re at the bar. Or, if we regret yelling at our child when angry, we may take a breath the next time we’re upset and respond with compassion.

Our regrets can teach us about ourselves, help us to avoid repeating mistakes, and encourage us to make better decisions in the future. On the other hand, if we use our regrets to beat ourselves up, or if we ignore them completely, they will not lead to growth. The key is finding the right balance, says Leahy.

“Regret doesn’t have to lead directly to self-recrimination,” he writes. But “never feeling regret is not a sign of wisdom or righteousness. It may be a sign you don’t learn from your mistakes.”

Why some people suffer from regret more

Some of us are more prone to regret than others, and Leahy provides multiple questionnaires within his book to help you identify where you fall on that scale. Though there is no way to eliminate regret completely—and the world would be worse if we did—there are factors that increase our chances of experiencing regret in a more negative way and suffering from it, says Leahy. Here are some of those risk factors.

Not tolerating ambivalence. Many life choices have pros and cons, and there are no guarantees about the future. But, if you can’t stand uncertainty, you are bound to avoid making hard choices, leaving you vulnerable to later regrets.

If Only…Finding Freedom from Regret (The Guilford Press, 2022, 246 pages).

Falling prey to biases. We all have cognitive biases, but some influence regret more than others. If you suffer a lot from negativity bias (discounting or not even seeing the positives in your life), black-and-white thinking (thinking things are either all good or all bad), or catastrophizing (thinking that if something goes wrong, you won’t be able to handle it), it’s bound to affect how much you suffer regret.


Worrying about “buyer’s remorse” or how bad we’ll feel in the future. If you’re the kind of person who often anticipates feeling awful for making a choice, it may keep you from deciding on a course of action that could bring you happiness, increasing the potential for regret.

Having too many choices. “Regret is an opportunity emotion—the more opportunity we see, the more likely we are to regret something,” writes Leahy. For example, a college graduate with multiple job offers might regret taking one over another, especially if it doesn’t pan out. Having too many choices increases your potential for making the “wrong” one.

Being a perfectionist. If you expect to have an ideal, happy life all of the time and are not easily satisfied, you will be more prone to regret. “Maximizers” (people who seek out optimal outcomes) tend to feel more regret than “satisficers” (people who are content with good-enough outcomes), unless they can take steps to lessen their maximizing tendencies.

How regret can guide our decisions

“Regret is a possible element of any decision that we make,” writes Leahy. “But the likelihood that you will regret your decisions will depend on how you think about making your decisions and how you cope with living with the result.”


If you’re someone who lets past regrets fester in your mind, Leahy recommends that you fight against irrational thinking and think more realistically about where you are in life. He suggests using approaches from cognitive-behavioral therapy to question your assumptions. Here are some of his tips.

Remember that you don’t know things would have turned out better.If you imagine your life would have been better “if only…,” keep in mind that your assumption is not based on real evidence. Instead of focusing on where you might have been, turn toward the future and remember it can change based on the choices you make now.

Focus on the positive aspects of your current life, to balance out the negative feelings that come with regret. Your negativity bias can keep you preoccupied with what’s wrong rather than what’s right. So, it’s a good idea to practice gratitude for the good in your life—even for the small, simple things.

Don’t forget that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you wanted them to, even with your most thoughtful planning. Life can hand you lemons, but that’s not necessarily your fault. You cannot be omniscient; so, you need to accept that sometimes you will regret your choices. But that doesn’t mean you should criticize yourself endlessly. Better to learn from your mistakes than to punish yourself.

Accept tradeoffs and compromises. Not everything has to turn out just the way you wanted it to. You will stymie your progress if you insist otherwise and make yourself miserable in the process. So, aim to be a satisficer rather than a maximizer.

Overall, Leahy advises that, once you’ve learned whatever lessons regret can teach you, you can let go of unrealistic expectations about what might have been, enjoy your life as it is, and start planning for a better future.

“Look around you at what is in the present moment and hold on to it with a warm embrace,” he writes. “Because your regrets will only keep you from what you have and who you are and trap you in a fictional world that never was—and never could have been.”  

Life isn’t always
(forgive the pun)
CRACKED UP
what it’s suppose to be
but then again.          .         .
when it comes at us in
BITE SIZE
Pieces
We have a better way of
NOT REGRETTING
and savoring all of the goodness out of it
we can.          .          .

Moms Demand Action gather on the steps of the Minnesota capitol to call attention to the issue of gun violence in 2018. © Fibonacci Blue / CC BY 2.0

When will it ever stop?

As gun violence gets worse in the United States, many of us feel overwhelmed by helplessness and anger.

We feel that, too, at Greater Good. But we know that change is possible, and that what we do as individuals matters. We’ll keep doing what we can to encourage people to take care of each other, see the good in ourselves and others, and understand the research that will help us to make better decisions.

Here are some resources that might help you make sense of gun violence, talk with kids about traumatic events, and take action for change.

Click to jump to a section:

Understanding gun violence
Resources for parents and educators
Tips for activism and hope
Organizations to support or get involved in

Understanding gun violence

• Seven Insights to Help You Make Sense of Gun Violence: Research can help us understand why guns are killing more Americans—and what we can do to stop it.
• What’s Driving Political Violence in America?: Hate crimes are rising, and so is support for political violence. New research explores why—and what we can do to stop it.
• Why Are Asian Americans Being Attacked and What Can You Do About It?: Here are science-backed ways we can reduce hatred and division.
• Racism is Not a Mental Illness: Many people argue that the white man who killed nine black people in Charleston must be mentally ill. What does the science suggest?
• How the Media Can Help Prevent Mass Shootings: Sensationalized TV coverage of mass shootings may encourage more of them.
• Gun Violence: Prediction, Prevention, and Policy by the American Psychological Association: Research-based conclusions and recommendations on how to reduce the incidence of gun violence—whether by homicide, suicide, or mass shootings—nationwide.

Resources for parents and educators

• Five Tips for Talking With Kids About What’s Going On in the World: By discussing challenging topics with our children, we can help them practice compassion.
• Nine Tips for Talking With Kids About Trauma: After a tragedy, kids will have questions. How do we respond?
• How to Talk With Kids About Scary News: Researcher Abigail Gewirtz explains how parents can have conversations with kids about global conflict and humanitarian crises.
• Nine Ways to Help Students Discuss Guns and Violence: How can educators respond to mass shootings in schools?
• Five Ways to Support Students Affected by Trauma: Teachers can help students recognize their strengths and build resilience.

Tips for activism and hope

• Four Reminders of Human Strength and Goodness after Sandy Hook: Are people horrible? It’s a question many Americans are asking ourselves after the horror of a school shooting.
• Who Is Your Rock? He survived the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, two years ago and has been a student mental health advocate ever since. Now Kai Koerber finds a way to thank the person who helped him find his voice.
• Six Tips to Avoid Being Overwhelmed by the News: Here’s how to cope when all the negative news is triggering you.
• How to Sustain Your Activism: These three principles can help activists avoid burnout and continue working toward a better world.
• How to Renew Your Compassion in the Face of Suffering: Mass suffering can make us feel helpless. Focusing on solutions, rather than emotions, may be the way out.

Organizations to support or get involved in

• Everytown for Gun Safety
• The Brady Campaign
• Newtown Action Alliance
• Giffords
• March for Our Lives
• Team Enough
• Alliance for Gun Responsibility
• Sandy Hook Promise
• Violence Policy Center
• Center for Gun Violence Solutions

It’s not really so much a time to WRITE RIGHT.       .       .

It’s a time that requires so much more

When the pandemic first came to California and lockdowns were instituted, many of Jill’s neighbors set out to help each other. Some called elderly neighbors to be sure they were OK. Others collaborated with local restaurants to create a low-cost food delivery service, feeding people around the city while helping restaurants find a source of income during closures. Still others began a drive to collect masks for essential workers.

These acts of altruism that seemed to be a common GOOD that spread across the World. But what motivated some neighbors to step up to do this, while others didn’t? And is altruism enough when it comes to disaster relief?

Those were the questions at the heart of a new study published in Analyses of Social Issues and Policy.

To better understand how altruism emerged during COVID-19, the researchers analyzed 104 stories of altruism appearing in major newspapers and blogs that were compiled by Ball State University between April and October 2020. They wanted to see if any themes emerged around who the helpers were, why they stepped up, whom they helped, and what kinds of help they offered. The ultimate goal was to paint a picture of how people ally with each other when disaster strikes and how they expand their sense of community.

“We were trying to understand how people come together,” says lead author Selin Tekin. “We wanted to know what kind of strategies people used to support each other and how the wider community can support those most affected.”

While some of the stories she and her team analyzed came from different parts of the world—India, Australia, and England, for example—the majority came from the United States, so the results are somewhat American-centric. But the stories do give a picture of a phenomenon that’s frequently seen when disaster strikes.

“A sense of community often appears in disasters when there are not adequate responses from the authorities or the government, or when there are contradictory messages from the government,” says Tekin. “Community members come together and share whatever resources they have.”

How people stepped up during COVID

Here’s what Tekin and her colleagues found when analyzing the stories.     .     .

Who helped. Many people who helped others during the pandemic belonged to organizations, associations, and faith communities that generally provide help to others, although some were volunteers who spontaneously decided to help. And many were economically or physically advantaged.

It makes sense that organizations set up to provide assistance would do so during the pandemic, and many did, including Catholic Social Services of Alaska, for example. When it became clear homeless people in Anchorage would be at risk of catching COVID in crowded shelters, the organization searched for private places for homeless people to live and helped move them into safer quarters.

Others stepped up once they became aware that certain groups were disproportionately impacted by COVID. Those with greater economic resources gave more generously, while younger people tended to offer their labor. As an example, one Yale college student and his friend put together a group of 1,300 volunteers in 72 hours to deliver groceries and medicine to older New Yorkers and other vulnerable people.

Many people volunteered spontaneously, too, after seeing a pressing need. At one petrochemical plant, 43 employees volunteered to work 12-hour shifts for a month just to produce raw materials needed for face masks and surgical gowns. This kind of volunteer spirit was similar to what I saw with my neighbors—a response that is fairly typical, according to Tekin.

“There are always volunteers who are willing to help their communities,” she says.

Why people stepped up to help. The main reasons people chose to help were that they felt an emerging sense of identity with those most affected by COVID, they wanted to be an ally of disadvantaged groups, and they felt grateful for those risking their own health to help.

Research has shown that those who have a strong sense of “we are in it together” are more likely to help in a crisis than those who don’t, and that was true during COVID, too. In many instances, people expressed feeling a sense of identity with those who were suffering. For example, one artist in Los Angeles sent thousands of paintings of flowers to health care workers in New York City to let them know, “You’re loved by millions of people you’ll never meet. You’re not a stranger to anyone.”

There were also many examples of people wanting to help the disadvantaged. One café owner in Australia withdrew 10,000 Australian dollars from his bank and gave out $100 bills to people standing in line for the social security offices. In India, a group of womenbegan cooking extra food for immigrant workers who were suffering during the lockdown.

In other cases, people wanted to express their thanks to those who were doing essential work during the pandemic. One neighborhood in Miami Beach organized an early-morning surprise for their garbage collectors, lining their street with people holding up signs and putting together gift bags, cards, and presents as a token of their gratitude.

Who was helped. The people most targeted for altruistic help were the elderly, those with health conditions or disabilities, essential workers, working-class people, or marginalized social groups.

For example, many store owners created special store hours when only the elderly or disabled could shop to reduce their risks of getting COVID. One woman created a mask that had a clear, plastic window over the mouth so that people who are deaf or hard of hearing could still use lip reading to understand those around them. When food insecurity rose during COVID, the FarmLink Project stepped up to deliver food that was being left unused at farms, delivering almost 240,000 pounds of food to food banks, and paid wages to farmworkers and other workers affected economically by COVID.

How people were helped. People provided material help, support for psychological or physical well-being, and social-emotional support.

Some people donated money, cooked and distributed food, or ran errands for those who couldn’t leave their house. Others distributed masks to those who had trouble procuring them or offered free counseling services to those suffering emotionally. Still others made calls to lonely, isolated folks or participated in rituals aimed at thanking health care workers on the frontlines (like clapping from their balconies).

Of all of these findings, the latter surprised Tekin most. “I was fascinated by how, even if people can’t give any kind of material support, they show their gratitude; they show that they’re aware of the support that they are receiving,” she says.

She notes many working-class and ethnic minority populations were disproportionately affected by the pandemic and didn’t receive an adequate response from authorities. So, it was heartening to Tekin to see that, when confronted with an outside threat, people can choose to help, whether or not government authorities intervene.

“People share an emergent identity, a human identity,” she says. “Here, we saw people with more financial or material resources willing to share with the disproportionately affected. It wasn’t surprising, exactly, because we’d seen this in previous research. But it’s always interesting.”

Lessons for times of crisis

All in all, these patterns show that in a crisis, people do often step up to help one another. This is good news that can be obscured by news reports of less ideal behavior—like hoarding toilet paper or jumping the line for vaccinations. When there is a sense of common humanity—that we’re in it together—it can encourage more people to feel more moved to help.

“Even though the system is not structured in a way that everybody can receive the same amount of resources under the principles of equity, community members can come together and support each other,” says Tekin. “People just need to be aware of that.”

On the other hand, our altruistic impulses are not enough, says Tekin. As the pandemic drags on, people’s enthusiasm to give tends to wane, even though the need continues. To combat that, it’s incumbent upon community aid groups and government agencies to provide support to those who continue to suffer disproportionately, she says.

“You need change at the systemic level—policies that deal with injustice or that help community aid groups to be more sustainable, because they are usually the people who know their communities best,” says Tekin.

In the meantime, it’s good to see that people are usually capable of expanding their circle of care and stepping up to help.

“Though there is a gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged, there’s also support,” says Tekin. “People don’t always know what to do to help, but they’re willing to do something.”\

NEEDLESS TO SAY
usually means
WE HAVE TO SAY IT CLEARER|
L               O               U                D               E               R

OR  NOT.          .          .
which is the not so subtle difference between
GOOD HAS COME
Or.          .          .
it’s still far off
on it’s way