Latest news with #FelixCheung
CNN
21-03-2025
- General
- CNN
Kindness will make you happier than a higher salary, report shows
CNN — The world may feel cold, scary and cruel, but if you are open to seeing it, there is a lot of kindness, according to a new report. The World Happiness Report, released each year on the International Day of Happiness, is a global analysis on happiness and well-being in partnership with Gallup, the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This year's report paid special attention to acts of benevolence and people's expectations of their communities. What are acts of benevolence? The report divided them into three categories: donating money, volunteering and doing a nice thing for a stranger. Based on the data, 70% of the world's population did at least one kind thing in the last month, the report found. 'That's a really, really high number,' said Dr. Felix Cheung, the report's coauthor and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Population Well-Being. 'We should just look at that number and feel really good. Seven in 10 people around us have done something nice … in the past month.' This trend of doing kind things is down from a spike during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is still an improvement from pre-lockdown numbers, according to the report. 'Even though the world feels like it's a pretty difficult place right now, it is nice to know that people are engaging in kind and generous acts,' said Dr. Lara Aknin, professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and an editor of the World Happiness Report. There is evidence that doing nice things helps both the recipient and the doer feel happier, and benevolence may be a key step to improving your own happiness and the overall happiness in the United States, which continues to drop on the list of happiest countries, said Ilana Ron-Levey, a managing director of the public sector at Gallup. (The US ranked No. 24 on this year's list of the happiest countries.) Doing good feels good Making a donation, doing an hour of volunteer work or engaging in some other small act of kindness may seem insignificant in the list of big things that make a happy life, but the data says otherwise, according to Ron-Levey. 'Acts of generosity predict happiness even more than earning a higher salary,' she said. Aknin has studied the impact of benevolence and found that it's significant. One experiment recruited a sample of participants on university campuses to report their baseline happiness. Researchers then gave them a small amount of money –– about $2 to $5 –– and told them to spend it on themselves or someone else, she said. 'Then we measure people's immediate emotional reactions,' Aknin said. 'By and large, we find in almost all of our studies that people randomly assigned to spend generously report feeling higher levels of happiness than people who spend on themselves.' The pattern was similar in other countries such as South Africa, Uganda and India. 'We're a super social species,' Aknin said, 'and we argue that acts of generosity help build and sustain those connections.' The 'empathy gap' Given the number of people who do kind things, expectations of benevolence are generally low, Aknin said. 'Long story short is that people are overly pessimistic,' she said. To understand how people perceive the levels of kindness around them, researchers for the survey asked if people expected a lost wallet to be returned to them, Cheung said. The researchers broke the survey down by seeing if people expected a neighbor, the police or a stranger would return the wallet. Prev Next 'The US ranks 17th in the world in believing a neighbor would return a lost wallet, 25th in the world in believing the same of police, but ranks only 52nd in believing that a stranger would return a wallet, which really suggests some fraying of social cohesion,' Ron-Levey said. People were more likely to believe that a neighbor or police officer would return a lost wallet if found, but belief in a stranger is a barometer of trust, Aknin said. 'The stranger returning a lost wallet is really, really important in terms of that trust in your society,' she said. And researchers have been able to compare the expectations with reality. In previous studies, researchers have gone to different cities around the globe, dropped wallets and analyzed the rates of the wallets being returned against what the people in that city reported they believed would happen, Aknin said. Almost every place drastically underestimated the likelihood of the wallet being returned by a stranger, she said. The disparity is called an 'empathy gap,' Aknin added. For example, about one-third of people expected a lost wallet to be returned in the US, whereas two-thirds of such wallets actually were, Cheung said. It makes sense that a bigger empathy gap would have a negative impact on happiness, Aknin added. 'If we assume the worst of others, it shapes how we interact with the world,' Aknin said. 'If we expect the worst of others, we walk around the world fearful, and that matters for our own well-being.' Why build community The good news is that the empathy gap can be closed, Aknin said. 'We're not asking people to have unreasonably optimistic (expectations),' Cheung said. But if you can 'develop that trust and you can expect that level of kindness, you will be a lot happier.' The report shows that people's perceptions of the kindness of others has improved when they take social risks, Aknin said. 'When they do, they realize that most of these risks are met with kindness and positivity,' she said. Aknin's research has also showed the best ways to perform benevolent acts to get the boost of happiness. She calls it the three C's. In your kind acts, you should connect with others, Aknin said. For example, you are more likely to get a bigger boost taking someone out for coffee rather than sending a person $5 to get coffee on their own, she said. 'Social time is pretty critical, or that face-to-face connection can go a long way,' Aknin added. The second C is for choice, meaning it feels better when you act in a kind or generous way because you want to, not because you feel obligated to do so, she said. The last is for a clear sense of positive impact. Doing something you can see the impact of or donating to a cause that you can see the benefit of is likely to give you the most fulfillment, Aknin said. One other metric that may tell part of the story regarding the connection between kindness and happiness is the rate of people eating alone, Ron-Levey said. 'Even when accounting for household size, eating alone is linked to lower lifestyle satisfaction,' she said. And meal sharing has been going down: One in 4 Americans reported eating all their meals alone the previous day –– which is a 53% increase since 2003, Ron-Levey said. 'These things are all connected,' she added. 'If you're eating by yourself most of the time, if you don't have someone that you can rely on in a time of need, if you're losing trust in institutions and your community, it's going to lead most likely to fewer benevolent acts, which, in turn, affects your happiness.' Those factors add up to isolation and lack of social connections, which can affect your happiness, Ron-Levey said. But that lack of community isn't true everywhere. A sense of community and social connection is 'one of the most important explanations of why Finland and the Nordic countries remain at the top of the happiness rankings year over year,' she added.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Canada drops to 18th in 2025 World Happiness Report rank, among the 'largest losers'
Canada has slipped to 18th place in the global World Happiness Report, down three spots from last year and placing it among the "largest losers" in happiness rankings over the last two decades, according to the annual report released Thursday. At its peak, in the 2015 report, Canada had placed fifth. Now, in 18th, Canada has dropped to its lowest-ever position since the polling began in 2005. The United States has also dropped to its lowest-ever position at 24th, having previously peaked at 11th place in 2012. The U.K. fell to 23rd. Finland once again came out on top, named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. "In general, the Western industrial countries are now less happy than they were between 2005 and 2010," notes the report. "In 2013, the top ten countries were all western industrial countries but now only seven are." While the country rankings are based on asking people to rate their own lives, the authors use six variables to help explain the variation between counties: Having someone to count on, GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. Canada ranked 15th and 16th globally for perceptions of corruption and GDP, respectively, but 35th for social support and 68th for freedom to make life choices. About 18 per cent of Canadians in the report said they were dissatisfied with their freedom to choose what they do with their lives. There's a tendency for people to think of happiness as a personal issue, and a person's own responsibility, but researchers believe that's not always the case, said Felix Cheung, a Canada Research Chair in population well-being and assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto. "When one person is unhappy, that's an individual issue," said Cheung, who is also a co-author of the World Happiness Report as well as the 2024 Canadian Happiness Report. "But when a country is unhappy, this is a structural issue, and a structural issue requires a structural problem." A downward trend This year's decline is a continuation of a downward trend for Canadians. The 2024 Canadian Happiness Report, for instance, found that Canadians' assessment of their quality of lives has steadily declined over the last decade — driven largely by Canadians under age 30. And disadvantaged groups experience lower life satisfaction. The least satisfied groups in the Canadian Happiness Report included members of the 2SLGBTQI+ community, people with low income, and First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people. Canadians with poor mental health were the least satisfied with their lives. So while overall happiness has dropped, it tends to be concentrated within certain groups, which is concerning, explains Cheung. He believes investing in youth mental health could be Canada's "best bet" to improve. There has been a shift in what it means to be a young person in Canada, Cheung said, citing housing affordability and a a sense of uncertainty as broader social trends that started long before COVID, when one might assume happiness started declining. "They feel that working hard doesn't necessarily allow them to move up that social ladder. And that is something we need to pay attention to." WATCH | What makes you happy? What makes people happy? In the new World Happiness Report, Canada's economy played a large role in its ranking, but human connections mattered, too. Researchers say that beyond health and wealth, some factors that influence happiness sound deceptively simple: sharing meals with others, having somebody to count on for social support, and household size. In the U.S., for example, more and people tend to eat lunches and dinners alone. This is especially true for younger people. The U.S. ranked 69th for meal-sharing, but Canada didn't come out much better at 53rd, or an average of 8.4 meals shared per week. Researchers linked sharing meals with wellbeing. Sharing meals has been linked with well-being, but more people are eating alone. Canadians ranked 53rd in the world for meal sharing. (Getty Images) Believing in the kindness of others is also much more closely tied to happiness than previously thought, according to the latest findings. And people are also more helpful than we think they are. As an example, the report suggests that people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population. And actual rates of wallet return are around twice as high as people expect. One of the studies researchers looked at happened in Toronto, by comparing experimentally dropped wallets with large samples of answers from Toronto respondents to the Canadian General Social Survey, according to the report. The expected rate of return was 23 per cent. The actual return was over 80 per cent. "People are much too pessimistic about the benevolence of others," notes the report. Afghanistan ranked last The study was done in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. About 100,000 people in 140 counties and territories are polled each year, and in most counties, about 1,000 people are polled either by phone or face to face. "Happiness isn't just about wealth or growth — it's about trust, connection and knowing people have your back," said Jon Clifton, the CEO of Gallup. "If we want stronger communities and economies, we must invest in what truly matters: each other." Besides Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the top four and in the same order. Finland once again came out on top, named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. (David Goldman/The Associated Press) While European countries dominate the top 20 in the ranking, there were some exceptions. Despite the war with Hamas, Israel came in at 8th. Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time, ranking at 6th and 10th respectively. Afghanistan is again ranked as the unhappiest country in the world, with Afghan women saying their lives are especially difficult. Sierra Leone in western Africa is the second unhappiest, followed by Lebanon, ranking the 3rd from the bottom. Part of the goal of the report is to reflect on what defines the success of a nation, explained Cheung. "We believe that happiness should be part of that conversation."
CNN
20-03-2025
- General
- CNN
Kindness will make you happier than a higher salary, report shows
Summary Acts of kindness make people happier than earning higher salaries, according to the World Happiness Report released on International Day of Happiness. About 70% of people worldwide performed at least one kind act in the past month. Studies show helping others boosts happiness for both giver and receiver, with the United States ranking 24th on the global happiness list. People significantly underestimate others' kindness, with researchers finding strangers return lost wallets more often than expected. Happiness increases when kind acts involve personal connection, free choice, and a clear positive impact on others. The world may feel cold, scary and cruel, but if you are open to seeing it, there is a lot of kindness, according to a new report. The World Happiness Report, released each year on the International Day of Happiness, is a global analysis on happiness and well-being in partnership with Gallup, the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This year's report paid special attention to acts of benevolence and people's expectations of their communities. What are acts of benevolence? The report divided them into three categories: donating money, volunteering and doing a nice thing for a stranger. Based on the data, 70% of the world's population did at least one kind thing in the last month, the report found. 'That's a really, really high number,' said Dr. Felix Cheung, the report's coauthor and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Population Well-Being. 'We should just look at that number and feel really good. Seven in 10 people around us have done something nice … in the past month.' This trend of doing kind things is down from a spike during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is still an improvement from pre-lockdown numbers, according to the report. 'Even though the world feels like it's a pretty difficult place right now, it is nice to know that people are engaging in kind and generous acts,' said Dr. Lara Aknin, professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and an editor of the World Happiness Report. There is evidence that doing nice things helps both the recipient and the doer feel happier, and benevolence may be a key step to improving your own happiness and the overall happiness in the United States, which continues to drop on the list of happiest countries, said Ilana Ron-Levey, a managing director of the public sector at Gallup. (The US ranked No. 24 on this year's list of the happiest countries.) Doing good feels good Making a donation, doing an hour of volunteer work or engaging in some other small act of kindness may seem insignificant in the list of big things that make a happy life, but the data says otherwise, according to Ron-Levey. 'Acts of generosity predict happiness even more than earning a higher salary,' she said. Aknin has studied the impact of benevolence and found that it's significant. One experiment recruited a sample of participants on university campuses to report their baseline happiness. Researchers then gave them a small amount of money –– about $2 to $5 –– and told them to spend it on themselves or someone else, she said. 'Then we measure people's immediate emotional reactions,' Aknin said. 'By and large, we find in almost all of our studies that people randomly assigned to spend generously report feeling higher levels of happiness than people who spend on themselves.' The pattern was similar in other countries such as South Africa, Uganda and India. 'We're a super social species,' Aknin said, 'and we argue that acts of generosity help build and sustain those connections.' The 'empathy gap' Given the number of people who do kind things, expectations of benevolence are generally low, Aknin said. 'Long story short is that people are overly pessimistic,' she said. To understand how people perceive the levels of kindness around them, researchers for the survey asked if people expected a lost wallet to be returned to them, Cheung said. The researchers broke the survey down by seeing if people expected a neighbor, the police or a stranger would return the wallet. 'The US ranks 17th in the world in believing a neighbor would return a lost wallet, 25th in the world in believing the same of police, but ranks only 52nd in believing that a stranger would return a wallet, which really suggests some fraying of social cohesion,' Ron-Levey said. People were more likely to believe that a neighbor or police officer would return a lost wallet if found, but belief in a stranger is a barometer of trust, Aknin said. 'The stranger returning a lost wallet is really, really important in terms of that trust in your society,' she said. And researchers have been able to compare the expectations with reality. In previous studies, researchers have gone to different cities around the globe, dropped wallets and analyzed the rates of the wallets being returned against what the people in that city reported they believed would happen, Aknin said. Almost every place drastically underestimated the likelihood of the wallet being returned by a stranger, she said. The disparity is called an 'empathy gap,' Aknin added. For example, about one-third of people expected a lost wallet to be returned in the US, whereas two-thirds of such wallets actually were, Cheung said. It makes sense that a bigger empathy gap would have a negative impact on happiness, Aknin added. 'If we assume the worst of others, it shapes how we interact with the world,' Aknin said. 'If we expect the worst of others, we walk around the world fearful, and that matters for our own well-being.' Why build community The good news is that the empathy gap can be closed, Aknin said. 'We're not asking people to have unreasonably optimistic (expectations),' Cheung said. But ifyou can 'develop that trust and you can expect that level of kindness, you will be a lot happier.' The report shows that people's perceptions of the kindness of others has improved when they take social risks, Aknin said. 'When they do, they realize that most of these risks are met with kindness and positivity,' she said. Aknin's research has also showed the best ways to perform benevolent acts to get the boost of happiness. She calls it the three C's. In your kind acts, you should connect with others, Aknin said. For example, you are more likely to get a bigger boost taking someone out for coffee rather than sending a person $5 to get coffee on their own, she said. 'Social time is pretty critical, or that face-to-face connection can go a long way,' Aknin added. The second C is for choice, meaning it feels better when you act in a kind or generous way because you want to, not because you feel obligated to do so, she said. The last is for a clear sense of positive impact. Doing something you can see the impact of or donating to a cause that you can see the benefit of is likely to give you the most fulfillment, Aknin said. One other metric that may tell part of the story regarding the connection between kindness and happiness is the rate of people eating alone, Ron-Levey said. 'Even when accounting for household size, eating alone is linked to lower lifestyle satisfaction,' she said. And meal sharing has been going down: One in 4 Americans reported eating all their meals alone the previous day –– which is a 53% increase since 2003, Ron-Levey said. 'These things are all connected,' she added. 'If you're eating by yourself most of the time, if you don't have someone that you can rely on in a time of need, if you're losing trust in institutions and your community, it's going to lead most likely to fewer benevolent acts, which, in turn, affects your happiness.' Those factors add up to isolation and lack of social connections, which can affect your happiness, Ron-Levey said. But that lack of community isn't true everywhere. A sense of community and social connection is 'one of the most important explanations of why Finland and the Nordic countries remain at the top of the happiness rankings year over year,' she added.
CBC
20-03-2025
- General
- CBC
Canada drops to 18th in 2025 World Happiness Report rank, among the 'largest losers'
Social Sharing Canada has slipped to 18th place in the global World Happiness Report, down three spots from last year and placing it among the "largest losers" in happiness rankings over the last two decades, according to the annual report released Thursday. At its peak, in the 2015 report, Canada had placed fifth. At 18th, Canada has dropped to its lowest-ever position since the polling began in 2005. The United States has also dropped to its lowest-ever position at 24th, having previously peaked at 11th place in 2012. The U.K. fell to 23rd. Finland once again came out on top, named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. "In general, the Western industrial countries are now less happy than they were between 2005 and 2010," notes the report. "In 2013, the Top 10 countries were all Western industrial countries, but now only seven are." While the country rankings are based on asking people to rate their own lives, the authors use six variables that can help explain the variation between countries: Having someone to count on, GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption. Canada ranked 15th and 16th globally for perceptions of corruption and GDP, respectively, but 35th for social support and 68th for freedom to make life choices. About 18 per cent of Canadians in the report said they were dissatisfied with their freedom to choose what they do with their lives. There's a tendency for people to think of happiness as a personal issue and a person's own responsibility, but researchers believe that's not always the case, said Felix Cheung, a Canada Research Chair in population well-being and assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto. "When one person is unhappy, that's an individual issue," said Cheung, who is also a co-author of the World Happiness Report as well as the 2024 Canadian Happiness Report. "But when a country is unhappy, this is a structural issue — and a structural issue requires a structural problem." A downward trend This year's decline is a continuation of a downward trend for Canadians. The 2024 Canadian Happiness Report, for instance, found that Canadians' assessment of their quality of life has steadily declined over the last decade — driven largely by Canadians younger than 30. And disadvantaged groups experience lower life satisfaction. The least satisfied groups in the Canadian Happiness Report included members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, people with low income, and First Nations, Métis and Inuit people. Canadians experiencing poor mental health were the least satisfied with their lives. So while overall happiness has dropped, it tends to be concentrated within certain groups, which is concerning, explains Cheung. He believes investing in youth mental health could be Canada's "best bet" to improve collective happiness. There has been a shift in what it means to be a young person in Canada, Cheung said, citing housing affordability and a sense of uncertainty that was only exacerbated by COVID, when one might assume happiness started declining. "They feel that working hard doesn't necessarily allow them to move up that social ladder. And that is something we need to pay attention to." WATCH | What makes you happy? Winnipeggers answer: What makes you happy? 8 hours ago Duration 3:44 What makes people happy? In the new World Happiness Report, Canada's economy played a large role in its ranking, but human connections mattered, too. Researchers say that beyond health and wealth, some factors that influence happiness sound deceptively simple: sharing meals with others, having somebody to count on for social support and household size. In the U.S., for example, more people tend to eat lunches and dinners alone. This is especially true for younger people. The U.S. ranked 69th for meal-sharing, but Canada didn't come out much better at 53rd, or an average of 8.4 meals shared per week. Researchers linked sharing meals with well-being. Believing in the kindness of others is also much more closely tied to happiness than previously thought, according to the latest findings. And people are also more helpful than we think they are. As an example, the report suggests people who believe that others are willing to return their lost wallet is a strong predictor of the overall happiness of a population. And actual rates of wallet return are around twice as high as people expect. One of the studies researchers looked at happened in Toronto, by comparing experimentally dropped wallets with large samples of answers from Toronto respondents to the Canadian General Social Survey, according to the report. The expected rate of return was 23 per cent. The actual return was over 80 per cent. "People are much too pessimistic about the benevolence of others," notes the report. Afghanistan ranked last The study was done in partnership with the analytics firm Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. About 100,000 people in 140 countries and territories are polled each year, and in most countries, about 1,000 people are polled either by phone or face to face. "Happiness isn't just about wealth or growth — it's about trust, connection and knowing people have your back," said Jon Clifton, the CEO of Gallup. "If we want stronger communities and economies, we must invest in what truly matters: each other." Besides Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the Top 4 and in the same order. While European countries dominate the Top 20 in the ranking, there were some exceptions. Despite the war with Hamas, Israel came in at eighth. Costa Rica and Mexico entered the Top 10 for the first time, ranking at sixth and 10th respectively. Afghanistan is again ranked as the unhappiest country in the world, with Afghan women saying their lives are especially difficult. Sierra Leone in western Africa is the second unhappiest, followed by Lebanon, ranking the third from the bottom. Part of the goal of the report is to reflect on what defines the success of a nation, explained Cheung. "We believe that happiness should be part of that conversation."
CNN
20-03-2025
- Health
- CNN
Kindness will make you happier than a higher salary, report shows
The world may feel cold, scary and cruel, but if you are open to seeing it, there is a lot of kindness, according to a new report. The World Happiness Report, released each year on the International Day of Happiness, is a global analysis on happiness and well-being in partnership with Gallup, the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This year's report paid special attention to acts of benevolence and people's expectations of their communities. What are acts of benevolence? The report divided them into three categories: donating money, volunteering and doing a nice thing for a stranger. Based on the data, 70% of the world's population did at least one kind thing in the last month, the report found. 'That's a really, really high number,' said Dr. Felix Cheung, the report's coauthor and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Population Well-Being. 'We should just look at that number and feel really good. Seven in 10 people around us have done something nice … in the past month.' This trend of doing kind things is down from a spike during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is still an improvement from pre-lockdown numbers, according to the report. 'Even though the world feels like it's a pretty difficult place right now, it is nice to know that people are engaging in kind and generous acts,' said Dr. Lara Aknin, professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and an editor of the World Happiness Report. There is evidence that doing nice things helps both the recipient and the doer feel happier, and benevolence may be a key step to improving your own happiness and the overall happiness in the United States, which continues to drop on the list of happiest countries, said Ilana Ron-Levey, a managing director of the public sector at Gallup. (The US ranked No. 24 on this year's list of the happiest countries.) Doing good feels good Making a donation, doing an hour of volunteer work or engaging in some other small act of kindness may seem insignificant in the list of big things that make a happy life, but the data says otherwise, according to Ron-Levey. 'Acts of generosity predict happiness even more than earning a higher salary,' she said. Aknin has studied the impact of benevolence and found that it's significant. One experiment recruited a sample of participants on university campuses to report their baseline happiness. Researchers then gave them a small amount of money –– about $2 to $5 –– and told them to spend it on themselves or someone else, she said. 'Then we measure people's immediate emotional reactions,' Aknin said. 'By and large, we find in almost all of our studies that people randomly assigned to spend generously report feeling higher levels of happiness than people who spend on themselves.' The pattern was similar in other countries such as South Africa, Uganda and India. 'We're a super social species,' Aknin said, 'and we argue that acts of generosity help build and sustain those connections.' The 'empathy gap' Given the number of people who do kind things, expectations of benevolence are generally low, Aknin said. 'Long story short is that people are overly pessimistic,' she said. To understand how people perceive the levels of kindness around them, researchers for the survey asked if people expected a lost wallet to be returned to them, Cheung said. The researchers broke the survey down by seeing if people expected a neighbor, the police or a stranger would return the wallet. 'The US ranks 17th in the world in believing a neighbor would return a lost wallet, 25th in the world in believing the same of police, but ranks only 52nd in believing that a stranger would return a wallet, which really suggests some fraying of social cohesion,' Ron-Levey said. People were more likely to believe that a neighbor or police officer would return a lost wallet if found, but belief in a stranger is a barometer of trust, Aknin said. 'The stranger returning a lost wallet is really, really important in terms of that trust in your society,' she said. And researchers have been able to compare the expectations with reality. In previous studies, researchers have gone to different cities around the globe, dropped wallets and analyzed the rates of the wallets being returned against what the people in that city reported they believed would happen, Aknin said. Almost every place drastically underestimated the likelihood of the wallet being returned by a stranger, she said. The disparity is called an 'empathy gap,' Aknin added. For example, about one-third of people expected a lost wallet to be returned in the US, whereas two-thirds of such wallets actually were, Cheung said. It makes sense that a bigger empathy gap would have a negative impact on happiness, Aknin added. 'If we assume the worst of others, it shapes how we interact with the world,' Aknin said. 'If we expect the worst of others, we walk around the world fearful, and that matters for our own well-being.' Why build community The good news is that the empathy gap can be closed, Aknin said. 'We're not asking people to have unreasonably optimistic (expectations),' Cheung said. But ifyou can 'develop that trust and you can expect that level of kindness, you will be a lot happier.' The report shows that people's perceptions of the kindness of others has improved when they take social risks, Aknin said. 'When they do, they realize that most of these risks are met with kindness and positivity,' she said. Aknin's research has also showed the best ways to perform benevolent acts to get the boost of happiness. She calls it the three C's. In your kind acts, you should connect with others, Aknin said. For example, you are more likely to get a bigger boost taking someone out for coffee rather than sending a person $5 to get coffee on their own, she said. 'Social time is pretty critical, or that face-to-face connection can go a long way,' Aknin added. The second C is for choice, meaning it feels better when you act in a kind or generous way because you want to, not because you feel obligated to do so, she said. The last is for a clear sense of positive impact. Doing something you can see the impact of or donating to a cause that you can see the benefit of is likely to give you the most fulfillment, Aknin said. One other metric that may tell part of the story regarding the connection between kindness and happiness is the rate of people eating alone, Ron-Levey said. 'Even when accounting for household size, eating alone is linked to lower lifestyle satisfaction,' she said. And meal sharing has been going down: One in 4 Americans reported eating all their meals alone the previous day –– which is a 53% increase since 2003, Ron-Levey said. 'These things are all connected,' she added. 'If you're eating by yourself most of the time, if you don't have someone that you can rely on in a time of need, if you're losing trust in institutions and your community, it's going to lead most likely to fewer benevolent acts, which, in turn, affects your happiness.' Those factors add up to isolation and lack of social connections, which can affect your happiness, Ron-Levey said. But that lack of community isn't true everywhere. A sense of community and social connection is 'one of the most important explanations of why Finland and the Nordic countries remain at the top of the happiness rankings year over year,' she added.
