Make Yourself Happy: Be Kind
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Kindness and niceness, though both excellent personal qualities, are not the same thing. The former is to be good to others; the latter is about being pleasant. They don’t even have to go together. Some say, for example, that New Yorkers are kind but not nice (“Your tire is flat, you moron—hand me your jack”), in contrast to Californians, who are nice but not kind (“Looks like you’ve got a flat tire there—have a good day!”).
Despite the traits’ practical differences, social scientists generally don’t separate niceness and kindness, but lump them together as “prosocial behavior.” The category includes such actions as helping others without solicitation or reward, donating to a charity, and giving that being prosocial clearly raises happiness, more so than treating yourself. The converse is true too: A recent review of the academic literature that happier people act more prosocially. In short, for the sake of your own well-being, there are good reasons to try to be kind.
