The United
Acts of Kindness Initiative

These are not soft choices. Gratitude and kindness are among the most studied interventions in psychology, and the findings are unusually consistent.

Researchers have found that writing down a few things you are grateful for, once or twice a week, is associated with better mood and better sleep. Acts of kindness produce a measurable physical response: the same reward chemistry involved in eating a good meal, alongside a fall in the hormones the body releases under stress.

Of every gratitude exercise tested, the one with the largest and longest-lasting effect is also the simplest — telling a person directly what they did for you. It is the version almost everyone avoids, because saying it out loud is harder than thinking it.

That finding shapes how we approach this work with young people: much of it comes down to helping someone say out loud something they would otherwise only think.

Findings above are drawn from published research on gratitude and prosocial behaviour, including Emmons & McCullough (2003), Seligman et al. (2005) and Luks (1988).