The Kindness Exchange

To celebrate World Kindness Day (Monday 13 November, 2023) and support the centre's aim of spreading kindness, our placement students hosted a week-long event consisting of two main activities: the first asked participants to answer question prompts related to five subtopics of kindness, and the second encouraged them to write a kind letter to be passed along to a stranger!

 

                     

 

• Blog Post 1: Introducing the Kindness Exchange. Receive Kindness and Pass it on!

  The mental health of students has been increasingly recognised as critical to understand. In a survey of undergraduate students at a private university, it was found that over half the participants had experienced a mental health problem at some point in their life. 58.3% of these participants reported having experienced extreme stress and 37% reported having experienced high levels of anxiety, making these the two most concerning mental health problems amongst students (Gibbons et al., 2018). 

  As students ourselves, we understand the mental battles students face whilst at university and the financial barriers associated with mental health care; therefore we believe it is imperative to provide students with accessible options to relieve stress. Kindness is that accessible option for one to improve not only their own mental wellbeing, but also to start a chain of events to help others’ too.

  Contrary to popular belief, being kind does not only benefit the receiver. Carrying out an act of kindness will in fact benefit you! We are often kind to people in need without any intention to make ourselves feel good, but, research shows that kindness activates the reward-system of the brain which in turn makes us feel good about ourselves! Over time, this will increase one's self esteem and as a result increase one's subjective happiness! As undergraduate placement students working for the Sussex Centre for Research on Kindness (ROK), we feel it is our duty to highlight to our fellow students the personal benefits of carrying out acts of kindness as an easy and accessible way to aid one's well being. Furthermore, we want to demonstrate how easy it is to be kind to not only others but ourselves as well. In a world where you can be anything, be kind!

  Starting on World Kindness Day (Monday 13 November) we are planning to host a series of interactive activities throughout the week to encourage students (and anyone who would like to get involved!) to be more kind. The event is based on a study by Ciocarlan et al., (2018) which identified five key categories that inspire positivity and promote wellbeing: being positive, being generous, expressing gratitude, being friendly and self-kindness. To ensure that we cover each kindness category, we have come up with five different questions to ask people each day:

   

  Monday - Being positive: “what is one positive thing in your life currently?”.

  Tuesday - Being generous: “how have you been generous in the last week?”.

  Wednesday - Expressing gratitude: “how have you expressed your gratitude to your loved ones recently?”.

  Thursday - Being friendly: “can you recall a time you were friendly towards a stranger?”.

  Friday - Self-kindness: “what is an act of kindness you do for yourself?”.

   

  Students will be encouraged to write down their answers so it can be pinned and shared with others, in order to start the chain of kindness. Research shows that simply recalling acts of kindness improves wellbeing therefore we believe this is a really accessible way for students to aid their mental wellbeing (Akin et al., 2012).

  In order to motivate this exchange of kindness, students will receive a card provided by the research centre in which they can write a message they wish to give to someone else, maybe someone they know who may be in need of a kind act or potentially even a stranger as a random act of kindness. Kindness isn’t just expressed with words! So any sort of creative output which can be received by another person will be incentivized. 

  We will also be extending our interactive event onto the ROK Instagram account (@researchonkindness), for anyone that can’t attend the events in person or feels more comfortable with an indirect approach to the event. After each day we will share the responses we received from the event and encourage people to type their own via an interactive poll on our story. We have also planned small kindness challenges for people to complete in their freetime, based on Ciocarlan et al., (2018) study where they provided different activities for the prominent themes. 

  Through our event we hope to demonstrate to students that it is really easy to be kind to others! We hope the students that get involved will get to experience how performing a kind act will make them feel good about themselves and hopefully they will recognise the power of kindness in terms of their well being; specifically increasing self-esteem and subsequent happiness. As a result, we hope that our event will encourage students to continue their acts of kindness and so the chain continues beyond our event!

  We want to remind everyone that their mental health matters and they are not alone with their thoughts. We hope that throughout our time on placement we can learn, share and nurture kindness and enforce a chain of kindness throughout not only students but a wide variety of people.

• Blog Post 2: The Kindness Exchange Summary

  To celebrate World Kindness Day (Monday 13 November), we wanted to create something that would prompt students to reflect on their own acts of kindness for their loved ones and themselves, but that would also encourage students to do an entirely selfless act of kindness for someone they don’t know. With this in mind, we began researching and planning and eventually came up with ‘The Kindness Exchange’ which consisted of two activities to spread kindness around campus throughout the week.

  A kindness question a day
  One part of our event consisted of us posing a question every day, and asking people to write down their answers to be shared with others to inspire kindness! The questions were inspired by a study by Ciocarlan et al., (2018) which identified five key categories that inspire positivity and promote wellbeing: being positive, being generous, expressing gratitude, being friendly and self-kindness. (Click on the links to see some of the responses that we received.) Lots of people initially struggled to think of something, particularly to the ‘self-kindness’ question ("what is an act of kindness you do for yourself?”), but that led to us having many fun and engaging conversations with the people we met about their everyday lives and the kindness they experience daily. We included the process of recall into our event as past research suggests that recalling acts of kindness improves wellbeing (Aknin et al., 2012). We’d like to think that we improved people’s day by prompting them to reflect – it certainly made us happy! We hope that this part of our event demonstrated to everyone involved that simply remembering an act of kindness can in fact improve their mood, and we hope that people continue this in everyday life to improve their wellbeing in the long run.

                        
  
  A message for a stranger
  We encouraged anyone who came over to our stall to leave a kind message for a stranger that we would pass along on their behalf. This proved to be the most popular part of the event! There was one very kind man, who was so enthusiastic about this that he actually came back to us asking for more cards to write on and give out to strangers! We soon realised why, when we were giving out the messages that people had written. We saw lots of faces light up; one lovely lady was even brought to tears by the message she received! This part of the event was hugely rewarding for us, and we would like to encourage people to be kind to strangers themselves from time to time. Despite the act initially appearing daunting, the reward you get once you realise you’ve brightened someone's day makes it worth it and it definitely becomes easier over time!

            

  Overall, we feel that the event was a huge success and we ultimately spread lots of kindness around campus. We met some really lovely, kind people throughout the week and would love to do something similar at another point in the year, potentially even off campus! We hope that everyone involved experienced something positive from our event and that they continue to be kind to others and themselves in their everyday lives.
  
  

  All the answers we received during the week have been uploaded to various padlets linked throughout this blog; feel free to take a look and add your own! To read our previous blog posts and find out more about other events, check out the website for the Sussex Centre for Research on Kindness. Scroll to the bottom of the page to join our mailing list, or follow our Instagram account. We hope to see you soon!

  
                                                               

          Ray Teso, Placement Student (Psychology). Freya Smith, Placement Student (Psychology).

• Online version of the Kindness Exchange

  The prompt questions used in the Kindness Exchange were inspired by a study by Ciocarlan et al., (2018) which identified five key categories that inspire positivity and promote wellbeing: being positive, being generous, expressing gratitude, being friendly and self-kindness.

  Click on the links to see some of the responses that we received and add your own!