Kindness matters – if a child wants to be happy and popular,
researchers say. Preteens assigned to do three acts of kindness
a week found they were better liked than kids who were assigned
to visit three places of their choice a week, the researchers
from UC Riverside and the University of British Columbia wrote
Wednesday in the journal PLoS One. “Increasing peer acceptance
is a critical goal, as it is related to a variety of important
academic and social outcomes, including reduced likelihood of
being bullied,” the researchers wrote. They say it’s the first
study to link performance of a simple helping behavior to an
increase in popularity. Previous studies have shown that there’s
a link between happy people and popular people, and that happy
people are more likely to do helpful or kind things. The
researchers divided 19 classrooms of children ages 9 to 11 in
Vancouver into two groups: one assigned to kind acts, one to
visit places for four weeks. The children then answered surveys
about their weeks. Kind ac