CHS300 Assignment Exploration Project

Kindness, The Break Down and How Other’s Interpret It

CH 300: The Science of Wellbeing

Introduction

My curiosity question is, what is kindness, and why is it important?

I chose this question because I want to know why some people are kind and why others are not. I want to know why some find it easy to be kind. This kind of act is vital in my life because I would love to relate to everyone around me without feeling like I have offended anyone. Kindness goes a long way especially with first impressions. First impressions are usually lasting impressions, so I would like to leave a room knowing I presented myself in the best way possible.

Participants

For this project, I chose to interview my mother (Cassandra Thompson), co-worker

(Theresa Farve), and my husband (Wilbert Harvey).

I chose my mother, Cassandra Thompson because I usually see how kind she is to her friends and family. She enjoys being a grandmother and takes pride and presenting kindness to my son. She is the sweetest person I have ever met. Her kindness comes off as genuine. She usually puts her needs to the side to make sure everyone else is ok. This selflessness she presents is what kindness really is. I love the way she relates to everyone around her; how she interacts with nearly everyone without offending them is the main reason I thought of her to be the best person to help me understand more about kindness.

My co-worker, Theresa is also a great person. To see her in action on how she treats our patients is encouraging. She tries to caters to everyone needs. She is always thinking of others and how she can help them. During this pandemic, she has gifted me and my family tons of essential items such as Lysol and hand sanitizer. This random act of kindness is just a small portion of what she does. It means a lot to me that my family was in her thoughts, this is why I chose her, to know that she views me as someone vital in her life is a great feeling and this has been since day one of meeting her. Some people you can tell are just seasonal people in your life and some you know GOD has placed them in your life to stay. She is one of the ones that is here

to stay.

I chose my husband, Wilbert, because he takes kindness to a different level. He exudes kindness in a totally different way from others. He’s a God-Fearing man and it shows in everything he does. He tries to lead by example as with what will God do. He presents kindness to others as being a mentor and a counselor to his loved ones and friends. I have watched him pray over his friends and family while they are going through tough times. He is not perfect by no means but to see him strive every day to achieve excellence is encouraging to not only me but his peers as well.

Interview Data

According to my mother, kindness means being polite, compassionate, and loving towards someone. She says it gets her closer to people, and she receives great gestures and favors from just being a genuine and kindhearted person. She also uses kindness as a way to connect to people regardless of how they feel about you; even if some people dislike you, they will find it very difficult to harm you.

My co-worker’s response was a bit thrilling. Her kindness to me and other comes from her life experiences and how she never met generous people who could understand her situation without judging her. She had a tough life in her childhood and struggled to be where she is today. This is why when she sees a need to help others she does. She says her art of generosity or giving has never brought her any loss, but instead it adds to her life, and she would love that people would practice such acts to better society.

My husband sees kindness as an act that brings people together and as a way to strengthen bonds between people. He believes that being kind gives you a chance to build on friendships. Leading by example will encourage the next person to be kind. He then explains that kindness doesn’t cost much to show to someone significantly who has or hasn’t wronged you. He says we all have wronged someone in our life but if it wasn’t for someone displaying kindness to him at the moment they did he wouldn’t be the man he is today. He also says that if he is kind, people will also be kind to him and his family including our son. He said he tries to instill that in him to better himself as a person so when it’s time for him to join school he has no problem with making friends. The generosity of kindness he puts out to his classmates will be returned to him, which he says is very important in life, to have in making new friends.

Course Concept or Skill Data

The course concept that best applies to my curiosity question is the random acts of kindness. Kindness can be as simple as being courteous and offering support and encouragement to others. It could be as simple as saying a kind word to the maid or servant who works tirelessly in your home or providing a tiny amount of food to the stray dog who visits your home every day (Rowland & Curry, 2019). These small acts of kindness don’t take much time, yet they can make a big difference. Kindness may contribute to a more beautiful and sustainable world.

Peer-Reviewed Data

Kindness entails treating others with respect. It can be accomplished by being courteous to them, providing emotional support, assisting them financially, improving their morale, or simply being supportive. Kind words and deeds performed by us are beneficial to the recipient and profitable to ourselves (Curry et al., 2018). It gives us a sense of achievement and delight when we assist others with their duties, are courteous, and perform other acts of kindness.

Interviews

Getting to talk to people was challenging because predicting their response towards you is very difficult, but again, this is the best method of collecting data. It has its limitations, like getting incomplete information; for example, getting some information from my co-worker was challenging because she felt the need not to disclose some of the acts of kindness she has done for people to keep it private. She said every good deed you do doesn’t need to be acknowledged or talked about because when you start looking for acknowledgment for a good deed it takes away the real intent behind the good deed. Which I happen to agree with.

Course material

Using course materials to gather information is less complicated or hectic compared to interviewing because the course material already has some of the information needed and are easy to access with all the information without limitations

Course Concept or Skill Data

The course concept that best applies to my curiosity question is the random acts of kindness. Kindness can be as simple as being courteous and offering support and encouragement to others. It could be as simple as saying a kind word to the maidservant who works tirelessly in your home or providing a tiny amount of food to the stray dog who visits your home every day (Rowland & Curry, 2019). These small acts of kindness don’t take much time, yet they can make a big difference. Kindness may contribute to a more beautiful and sustainable world

Peer-reviewed articles

Getting information from these articles is challenging because every author has their opinion and one can get confused on what information to pick.

Many physicians regard articles as a quick and easy “surrogate” for primary data on a particular issue. Still, they can vary significantly in quality and relevance to a specific clinical situation. Review articles are frequently written by one or two experts in a field, are prone to bias, including the authors' viewpoints, gaps in literature searching practices that may result in the omission of relevant research, errors in the translation of data from the primary literature to summarization in the review, and misrepresentation or misinterpretation of original data- flaws that are difficult to discover without consulting original literature to confirm the review’s suggestions and conclusions.

Kindness entails treating others with respect. It can be accomplished by being courteous to them, providing emotional support, assisting them financially, improving their morale, or simply being supportive. Kind words and deeds performed by us are beneficial to the recipient and profitable to ourselves (Curry et al., 2018). It gives us a sense of achievement and delight when we assist others with their duties, are courteous, and perform other acts of kindness Discussion

Can kindness be inborn and stay with someone naturally? The interviews I conducted gave me various responses to my curiosity question in that my mother’s response made me realize that some people are just naturally kind and nothing is required. Yes, when you are kind to people good things come your way. That’s called good karma. But to not expect anything in return and still put out kindness is genuine. On the other hand, my co-worker’s response inspired my thoughts about kindness because I realized that someone’s kindness and generosity can be generated from their past and their own experiences. Growing up and having to struggle for necessities built her into the woman she is today. One can be kind towards another person just as way to help someone be better or improve their conditions. My husband’s response was mainly based on his religion and being Christ-like. For him being kind to someone was a way to help build relationships and to bring people closer to God.

The course concepts impacted my thoughts in that we see many people choose who they want to be kind to and who not to be kind to, which I also found to be wrong because this is an act that should come naturally to someone and not a choice that has to be made because of how we feel about people.

The findings in the peer-reviewed article complicated my thoughts about what kindness is because the different authors had way different opinions and ideas on the meaning of kindness. The more I read about it, the more I got confused. According to some authors, being kind to some is also something that someone can practice and be good at it according to some authors, kindness can be taught in schools by teachers, something I found to be confusing because we shouldn’t have to teach kindness to to others. We should just lead by example. Me being nice to someone should rub off on them and make them want to put that feeling out to others.

The methods of data I used had some similarities and differences; for example, the interviews, course materials, and peer-reviewed articles showed that kindness mostly happens out of the experiences someone has had and feels the need to extend the same gesture to others. I learned that kindness comes with politeness and helpfulness. The difference that I spotted between the data collection methods was that in the interviews, some people think that they need to be kind to someone to get the same treatment back. In contrast, in the course materials, people become kind to others to please the community and gain favors, and in the peer-reviewed articles, kindness can be acquired and used in our daily lives.

Conclusion

The best answer for my curiosity question is the one I got from the interviews I made because they were honest about how they understood kindness and gave relevant examples that I could relate to.

I think the different data collection methods that I used played a vital role in the kind of information I was able to gather. This is because they gave me a variety of answers to work with, and in the end, I was able to conclude after analyzing all of them is that random acts of kindness increases our life and well-being. We put out positive energy to others in hopes that is precipitated to the next person, that which creates a circle that keeps evolving. In conclusion, I would say in fact that kindness is contagious and is beneficial to our well-being.

Take-Home Message

I believe that if people merely try, the power of compassion may grow in their lives. Simple acts of kindness, such as telling the teacher how much you enjoyed their class or purchasing someone’s dinner who is in the drive through behind you can make a huge difference. I feel that infusing compassion into my daily routine because it makes both you and the other person happy. I wouldn’t have the lovely, loving friends. I have now if I hadn’t followed my convictions.

Wellbeing Intention

I intend to continue studying on how people behave or acts towards each other as they express kindness. I will do this through interviews and peer-reviewed articles. I learned a lot and it was interesting and I feel like getting to know more and even teach other people on the things I will have learnt.

References

Curry, O. S., Rowland, L. A., van Lissa, C. J., Zlotowitz, S., McAlaney, J., & Whitehouse, H. (2018). Happy to help? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.02.014

Rowland, L., & Curry, O. S. (2019). A range of kindness activities boost happiness. In Journal of

Social Psychology (Vol. 159, Issue 3). https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2018.1469461