It looks like a series of happenings in recent months like the health crisis, economic hardship followed by the Black Life Matters protest has shattered human spirit.
Thankfully, this is not the case as a study conducted by the University of South Carolina and Ohio State University suggest that people are very optimistic and more than ready to be kind to each other.
Humanity: The Ultimate Winner
The online survey conducted by researchers found that participants, when requested to donate some money, actively choose to be very generous even with some cost attached to it. Interestingly, participants were eager to donate cash even to strangers without any external motive.
At times when there is pessimism and hatred everywhere, the survey results showed people were ready to help others without any external motivation or anticipation of getting something in return for the generosity.
“We observe a ‘help enough or do not help at all’ dynamic, with participants giving more when they had no reason to expect reciprocation from someone than to others who had previously helped them but not very much,” the Daily Mail quoted text from the study in Scientific American.
Ray of Hope
The research team wanted to see the combined effect of four motivators, namely the idea of gain, the act of kindness and reciprocity, doing good in social setup, and the notion of pay-it-forward.
Emphasizing on the combined role of motivators in a real-life situation, the lead author of the study, David Melamed, told Daily Mail that in the real-world motivators act in combination while they make choices about the level of generosity and kindness to one another.
Based on inputs, collected online from over 700 participants, the study concluded that all motivation works in a real-world setting.
The value system, scenario, and context might vary at the core. It is the act of kindness and passion to do good to others makes us truly human, even at some cost.
