The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental sequence in children's judgments of kindness in a situation of intentionality. The Kindness Judgment Interview was conducted by using three different story types in which parameters on intentions and consequences (benefits) were varied. Sixty-three subjects consisting of kindergarteners, first and third graders were individually int...

In two studies, self-affirming the behavioral trait of kindness was examined as a method of regulating state disgust toward one's physical appearance. In Study 1, 56 participants (37 women, 19 men, Mage=33.16 years) completed either a questionnaire designed to self-affirm kindness or a control equivalent and rated their disgust, anger, sadness, and happiness toward their appearance and behavior...

The ideas of cruelty, kindness, and unnecessary suffering play prominent roles in the growing debate over our treatment of animals. An index of how pervasive these ideas are, is that a philosopher who does not rely on them, or not all of them, or who argues in ways that give other ideas a place of prominence, might none the less be viewed as resting his case against, say, vivisection or factory...

We examined the relationship between the character strength of kindness and subjective happiness (Study 1), and the effects of a counting kindnesses intervention on subjective happiness (Study 2). In Study 1, participants were 175 Japanese undergraduate students and in Study 2, participants were 119 Japanese women (71 in the intervention group and 48 in the control group). Results showed that: ...

How to promote compassionate care within public services is a concern in several countries; specifically, some British healthcare scandals highlight poor care for service users who may readily be stigmatised as 'other'. The article therefore aims to understand better the relationship between stigma and compassion. As people bereaved by a drug- or alcohol-related death often experience stigma, t...

Cooperating with others often entails some sacrifice of one's own material interests. Many theories of reciprocity and cooperation thus assert a social-material tradeoff. In these theories, people reciprocate cooperation when they prioritize how they treat others and how others treat them. They do not reciprocate cooperation when they prioritize their own material well-being. We challenge this ...

Although kindness-based contemplative practices are increasingly employed by clinicians and cognitive researchers to enhance prosocial emotions, social cognitive skills, and well-being, and as a tool to understand the basic workings of the social mind, we lack a coherent theoretical model with which to test the mechanisms by which kindness-based meditation may alter the brain and body. Here, we...