What Is a Kind Act to a Kid?

Kindness is typically understood as actions intended to benefit others, at some cost to the actor—an ABC model of kindness (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1970; Curry and colleagues, 2018).

Our previous research with adults has found that the kindness of everyday acts—such as paying someone a compliment or holding the elevator door for someone—depends largely on the benefit provided, and to a lesser extent, the cost incurred (Curry, San Miguel, Wilkinson, and colleagues, 2023). We have also found that the ratio of the cost adults are willing to pay for a given benefit to friends and strangers is approximately 0.70 – a kindness quotient of 70 percent (Curry and colleagues, in prep). This means that adults care about others about 70 percent as much as they care about themselves.

However, relatively little is known about how young people weigh up the costs and benefits of kindness. Previous research has found that social-moral traits emerge early in infancy (Dawkins and colleagues, 2020), and that prosocial behavior— including generosity and fairness—develops gradually through childhood (Blake and colleagues, 2015; Cowell and colleagues, 2017; House and colleagues, 2013; Ibbotson, 2014). Research has also shown that children as young as ages 6 to 8 factor costs into moral judgments (Zhao and Kushnir, 2023); and children show increasing sensitivity to the cost (self-sacrifice) of an act when judging its kindness (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1970) and generosity (Radovanovic and colleagues, 2023). Infants (18 months) and young children (5 to 6 years) also show sensitivity to cost when deciding whether to help others (Lee and Setoh, 2023; Sommerville and colleagues, 2018). A study involving sharing stickers found that 4- to 10-year-olds have kindness quotients of around 48 percent (Howard and colleagues, 2018).

What do young people think about everyday acts of kindness? We asked kids (aged 9-12, n=945) and teens (13-17, n=939) to rate the benefit, cost, kindness, and likelihood of performing a random selection of 15 of 173 acts. For comparison, we also asked adults (18+, n=889) to rate how beneficial, costly, kind, and likely the acts would be for young people to perform (Curry, San Miguel, and Tunc, 2023).

What did we find? The kindest acts, as rated by kids, included:

• Remind someone that they are important
• Stand up for someone who is being picked on
• Help someone who falls over in the street
• Donate food to a food bank
• Offer to help someone with a disability

For teens, the kindest acts included:

• Write a letter to a child who is ill in the hospital
• Stand up for someone if you see them being bullied or treated unfairly because of their identity
• Help someone who falls over in the street
• Find three of your toys to give to the local children's hospital
• Get help if someone is in trouble

For adults, the kindest acts included:

• Help someone visually impaired cross the street safely
• Stand up for someone who is being picked on
• Stand up for someone if you see them being bullied or treated unfairly because of their identity
• Donate your hair to make wigs for sick children
• Help someone who falls over in the street

What about the relationship between cost, benefit, and kindness? We found that, among kids and teens, benefit but not cost, predicts the kindness of acts. Whereas among adults, both benefit and cost predicted kindness. We also found that, when it comes to performing these acts, kids and teens were more likely to perform beneficial acts, and less likely to perform costly acts; and they had kindness quotients of 61 percent and 65 percent respectively. Adults, meanwhile, viewed young people as having slightly lower quotients – 59 percent.

Overall, the results for kids and teens are similar to those of adults, except that kids were less sensitive to the cost of acts, and were more sanguine about performing kind acts. Perhaps adults underestimate the kindness of young people, or perhaps young people overestimate their kindness.

In practical terms, there are several ways that these findings might help individuals and organizations—such as schools (Tunç and colleagues, 2023)—decide how best to promote kindness. For example, they might use these ratings to identify the least costly or most beneficial acts to perform. They might focus on making it easier (less costly) to perform these acts (providing nudges or removing barriers) and emphasize their benefits. And because the perceived costs and benefits may not accurately reflect the actual costs and benefits, organizations might campaign to correct misperceptions, thereby making acts more likely to be performed. In general, the results suggest that recommending cost-effective acts may be the best way to encourage kids to be kinder.

Further research on these questions—including extending this approach to look at the cost-benefit profiles of other prosocial concepts, such as heroism, generosity, and gratitude—will improve our understanding of the psychology of kindness, and help to make the world a kinder place for all ages.