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The Surprising Power of Social Mindfulness
Altruism refers to actions that help others but come with a personal cost, and it has received a lot of attention from researchers. But most of our daily social behaviors are more subtle than that. Usually, if we’re trying to be friendly or generous, we’ll help people with smaller actions that are considerate of their feelings but don’t necessarily require a major investment.
When we hold a door open for someone, give directions to a tourist, or leave the last slice of pizza to a friend, we’re engaging in social mindfulness. It might not be as dramatic as altruism, but as the evidence below shows, it predicts important social and economic outcomes around the world.
Social mindfulness around the world
Just last week, more than 60 scientists published a collaborative research paper in the journal PNAS. The purpose was to compare levels of social mindfulness in 31 different countries with a total sample of over 10,000 people.
To measure social mindfulness, the researchers used an experiment that presented people with an array of items containing two or three identical objects and one unique object (e.g. one…
