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Why doing good can do you good

General Research

We feel good when we do a good deed, so there must be a psychological benefit to helping others? But how can we know for sure? The best way to study the health benefits of kind deeds is to look at studies of volunteering.

In 2011, Daniel George conducted a randomised trial with 30 adults in Ohio with mild to moderate dementia. Half the adults spent an hour every two weeks helping young school children with reading, writing and history. The other half (the control group) were assigned to not do any voluntary work. At the end of the five-month study, stress was lowered more in the adults who helped than in the adults who didn’t.

Read the full article on The Conversation website, written by Jeremy Howick, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.

Oxford is a subscribing member of The Conversation. Find out how you can write for The Conversation.

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