<
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/20/covid-benevolence-bump-endures-kindness-10-higher-before-2020>
"The world experienced a “benevolence bump” of kindness during the Covid-19
pandemic that has remained, with generous acts more than 10% above pre-pandemic
levels.
The annual
World Happiness Report found that in 2024, acts such as donating
and volunteering were more frequent than in 2017–19 in all generations and
almost all global regions, although they had fallen from 2023.
Helping strangers was still up by an average of 18% from the pre-pandemic era.
Prof Lara Aknin, a Canadian professor of social psychology and one of the
report’s editors, said the number of people who reported helping strangers
sharply increased in 2020 and the numbers had been sustained.
She said: “I think many people have an interest in helping others, but
sometimes shy away; they don’t want to overstep their welcome. The Covid-19
pandemic made it abundantly clear that many of us need help from our neighbours
and friends.
“So maybe people felt a greater sense of obligation and lower levels of
inhibition knowing their help would be welcomed.”
She said data in the coming years would help reveal whether the benevolence
trend was here to stay. “One perhaps really optimistic possibility is that
we’ve now opened our eyes to the needs of other people and the emotional
rewards we get from helping other people, and that could fuel this positive
spiral between helping others and wellbeing,” she said."
Via
What Could Go Right? S7 E4:
https://theprogressnetwork.org/progress-march-2025/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
