The study also showed that in societies in which people walk very quickly, people offer help but in a less kind way. In Rio, people would walk after the person who has dropped the pen and hand it to them; in New York, people would yell that you had dropped your pen but keep walking away.
For Robert Levine, it doesn’t make sense that the people of New York have a less kind nature than the people of Kolkata. What seems to matter is what we are taught and how our citizens act. In a time when more and more people are moving to cities, this raises the question of how we may all be kinder, even though our cities are becoming more densely populated.
People’s willingness to help a stranger
Source: Robert Levine, ‘The Kindness of Strangers: People’s Willingness to Help Someone during a Chance Encounter on a City Street Varies Considerably around the World’, American Scientist, 2003
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FUCKING FRIENDLY
‘Denmark is home to the happiest people on earth. You’d think because we are the happiest, we would also be the friendliest. We are not.’
Lars is the son of an American father and a Danish mother and the founder of the Danish movement Fucking Flink. Flink is Danish for ‘kind’, ‘nice’, ‘friendly’, ‘good-natured’.
In 2010, he published the book Fucking Flink – How Do the Happiest People in the World Also Become the Fucking Friendliest? It is a sort of ‘friendliness manifesto’ intended to provoke Danes into being friendlier in their daily lives.
He is not trying to advocate more ‘how are you?’s, ‘please’s and ‘thank you’s; what he is after is what he calls genuine friendliness, caring about the people around you. Lars is one of the nicest people I know. We have met a few times over the past years, and meeting him always puts me in a good mood.
He believes that kindness breeds more kindness. ‘But what I have realized is that I am happier when I forget about myself and focus on other people.’ In one experiment, Lars pretended to be a parking attendant but, instead of handing out tickets, he placed prizes on the windshields of cars that had been parked considerately or were excellent examples of parallel parking.
He knew that a book was not going to turn a nation of brute ex-Vikings into champions of kindness, so he created a Facebook page on which people could share stories of people doing nice things.
In 2012, it became the fastest growing Facebook page in Denmark, and it currently has 200,000 members – not bad for a nation of 5.5 million.
‘I was in the supermarket on Rantzausgade in Copenhagen and noticed a couple in there with their son. He was about eight and had Down’s syndrome. When I finished filling my basket, I went to the check-out and found the cashier on the customer side and in his seat the kid with Down’s syndrome, who has the biggest smile on his face. He is scanning his parents’ groceries. “Do you need anything else?” the kid asks his parents. After the parents had paid, their son handed them their receipt and high-fived the cashier. I left the store with the biggest smile and a warm feeling. I am so happy that there are people who are so fucking kind, that they take the time to do these kinds of things for other people.’
This is just one of thousands of stories which have been shared, inspiring more people to be kind and do more good: people driving other people home, children giving their toys to other children who look sad, and people reporting from a waiting room at the doctor’s that they found wool, knitting needles and a half-knitted scarf with a note that read: ‘Feel free to knit while you wait. When it is finished, we will give the scarf to a homeless person.’
Last year, Lars and his team conducted an experiment to explore the effects of being kind. The 981 people who participated were randomized into two groups. One was the control group, who would continue to act as before, and one was the treatment group, in which participants were asked to do one nice thing each day for a week. Before and after the experiment, all the participants were asked various questions about their well-being. The results showed that the people who had been performing kind acts for a week felt less angry, laughed more and felt more energized.
The participants also wrote down what they had done in terms of nice deeds. One woman in her forties wrote: ‘The cashier at the supermarket was really surprised when I offered her a fl?debolle (a chocolate-covered cream puff). It was great. She said yes. I had my kids, who are six and ten, with me, and after we left the shop they said, “That was fun, Mum. Can we do it again?” I felt I’d sown an important seed in my children that day.’
Lars is not the only one trying to make the world kinder and happier. In the UK, Action for Happiness is promoting kindness as one of the keys to happier living, and in the US the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation encourages people to become a ‘RAKtivist’ (Random Acts of Kindness activist) – a sort of kindness ambassador. I think most of us would like to help, but we are not always sure how we can, and we, like Clark, would like it to be personal.
There are also other platforms that are helping us help others. Be My Eyes is a Danish app that connects the blind and visually impaired with sighted helpers from around the world via a live video connection. It is free to download and free to use. Does this can contain corn or beans? Helpers help to distinguish between products, match or explain colours, find lost items and say whether lights are turned on or off. The app matches people based on language and time zone, so if you need help at 4 a.m. you don’t need to worry that you’re waking somebody up.
The app is used in 150 countries, with more than 35,000 blind and visually impaired individuals being assisted by more than 500,000 sighted helpers. In other words, for every one person needing help, fourteen people would like to help. It is testimony to how much people want to help if we give them the tools to do so, if we make it personal and if we connect them with people in need.
HAPPINESS TIP:
BECOME A RAKTIVIST
Start doing little Random Acts of Kindness
Sign up on the website www.randomactsofkindness.org and become a member of the Global Community of Kindness, or join local communities of kindness like the Fucking Flink movement (www.fuckingflink.dk/) in Denmark. Start out with little things: give a (sincere) compliment, help a tourist find their way, pass on a book you have enjoyed, tell someone who means a lot to you that they do.
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KINDNESS
The Free Help Guy
London, UK: An anonymous man who will help with (almost) anything for free has found purpose and happiness in return. Read more on this page.
The Gift Compassion Project
Hyderabad, India: Children from rich and poor schools are paired up and exchange gifts they have made themselves in order to break down social barriers.
Help for the Homeless
Warsaw, Poland: In a pillar-like chest of drawers in the middle of a square, homeless individuals have their own box, on which they write down the things they need the most. Caring passers-by can then drop the necessary items in the box.
Feeding man’s best friend – and reducing waste
Istanbul, Turkey: To keep homeless dogs from starvation, the Turkish company Pugedon has invented a vending machine that dispenses dog food in exchange for bottles. When someone deposits a bottle at the top, food is released at the bottom. The Smart Recycling Boxes operate at no charge to the city and the recycled bottles cover the cost of the food.
The friendliest faces
Málaga, Spain: The Happiness Research Institute has been studying the frequency of smiles in the streets of more than twenty cities worldwide, and Málaga came out top. Read more on this page.
The kindest strangers
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Experiments to find out who will help a stranger pick up a pen that has been dropped or help blind people across the road have found Brazilians to be the kindest. Read more on this page.
PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER