Do your little bit of good where you are; it's
those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. - Desmond
Tutu
How Our Bodies React to Seeing Goodness
--by Jill
Suttie, syndicated from Greater
Good, Jun 11, 2015
A new study maps what happens in our bodies
and brains when we witness acts of kindness and compassion.
I
don’t know about you, but no matter how many times I watch It’s
a Wonderful Life, I am moved to tears. Something about that moment when
George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, is rescued from financial and emotional
ruin by the generosity of his friends gets to me, making me feel deeply moved
and hopeful about our capacity for human goodness.
Researchers
have a name for that high we get from witnessing human goodness: “moral
elevation.” And it has been shown to have many positive benefits. Past
studies have found that moral
elevation inspires optimism, and makes people want to be a better person and
to act altruistically toward others.
Now
a new study in Biological
Psychology sheds some light on
what’s going on in your body and brain during elevation, and why it has a
distinct role to play in our human interactions.
In
this study, 104 college students watched a couple of videos depicting either
heroic, compassionate acts or just amusing situations, while researchers took
measurements of their heart rate and medial prefrontal cortex activity. Activity
in the medial prefrontal cortex is associated with higher-level cognitive
process, such as empathy and “theory of mind” - our ability to predict social
behavior - and is thought to be involved in experiences of moral elevation.
The
researchers also measured respiratory sinus arrhythmia, an indicator of activity
in the parasympathetic nervous system or PNS (our calming, self-soothing
system), while heart rate indicates activity in the sympathetic nervous system
or SNS (our arousal, “fight or flight” system). Because PNS activity is
associated with warm feelings towards others and bonding behavior, the
researchers expected activation in the PNS during moral elevation. Their results
showed a different pattern: During peak emotional points in the videos,
participants who watched the elevation-inspiring videos experienced dual
activation—increases in both the PNS and the SNS - while those watching the
merely amusing videos did not experience either.
This
dual activation during elevation surprised Sarina Saturn, a researcher at the
Oregon State University and one of the authors in the study. “This is a really
uncommon pattern, where you see both of these systems recruited for one
emotion,” says Saturn, a former Hornaday Postdoctoral Fellow of the Greater Good
Science Center.
After
looking into the literature further, she says, the findings began to make sense.
Dual activation of the PNS and SNS occurs in situations that involve attending
to others in a prosocial way while also needing to stay alert and aroused, such
as during parenting and sexual activity. Moral elevation must involve a similar
pattern, which makes some sense: To see a compassionate act, we must witness
suffering, and that’s stressful. However, once we see the suffering alleviated
through an altruistic act, it calms our heart (through the PNS), allowing us to
get past the stress and give us that pleasant, warm glow feeling. This feeling
is probably what calms our hearts enough to give us the motivation to “pay it
forward” by acting altruistically in the future.
“It’s
kind of cool to see that what’s happening in your body is an impetus to
prosociality and inspires people to give and be kind,” says Saturn. “I think
we’ve known that anecdotally; but now it’s great to see what’s actually
happening in the body and the brain.”
Saturn’s
team was surprised by study results for prefrontal cortex activity, too:
activity levels varied significantly from one elevation scenario to another.
This could be explained by the fact that the two elevation scenarios were a bit
different - one involved coming to the aid of a physically injured person and
one didn’t. In this case, the scenario involving physical injury is what caused
the prefrontal cortex to light up, suggesting that the cortex may only
selectively play a role in elevation.
“Previous
research has shown that when you see someone in pain, that part of the brain
lights up - so that may explain it,” says Saturn. “There needs to be more work
to see when the prefrontal cortex goes off and online in moral elevation.”
What
does this all mean?
It
appears that moral elevation inspires altruism because of a mixture of arousal
and the desire to protect others. Saturn believes that the hormone oxytocin -
the “tend and befriend” hormone - is probably responsible for that, and that it
may explain the strong, visceral responses people feel when morally elevated. In
her next experiment, she hopes to study oxytocin release during elevation in new
mothers - a population where it’s easier (and cheaper) to study it.
Though
she and other researchers are learning more about this complex emotion, there
are still many unanswered questions. Saturn wonders if future research will show
that there are individual differences that account for varying responses to
moral elevation. However, her own research seems to be showing the opposite -
that moral elevation has a positive effect on people regardless of background, a
finding that gives her hope.
“The
good news was that we weren’t able to find a lot of individual differences [in
our participants] based on life experiences or oxytocin receptor genotypes,”
says Saturn. “So in a way I find that heartening, because it seems like it’s
accessible to everyone. No matter where we are emotionally, it can uplift all of
us.”
So
is my annual watching of It’s
a Wonderful Life a good thing?
Saturn thinks so.
“I
think we have a tendency to absorb what we’re witnessing and that it has an
impact on our body and brain,” she says. “We’ve found that just showing an
inspiring video of people being kind is enough to cause these dramatic events
taking place in the body and to allow you to want to pay it forward and be
prosocial in turn.”
George
Bailey, here I come.
This
article is printed here with permission from the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC). Based at UC Berkeley, the GGSC
studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches
skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. You can
learn more about the science and power of gratitude at the Greater
Good Gratitude Summit.
Be The Change: Take a few moments today to
witness something beautiful -- perhaps the colour of the sky during your evening
commute, a smile on your colleague's face, or birdsong outside the window -- and
reflect on any impact taking these moments has on your body and
mind.
