{"id":2523,"date":"2019-03-05T11:14:03","date_gmt":"2019-03-05T11:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/?p=2337"},"modified":"2021-07-22T08:43:09","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T08:43:09","slug":"if-you-ever-feel-like-you-dont-make-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/if-you-ever-feel-like-you-dont-make-a-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"If you ever feel like you don&#8217;t make a difference"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2338\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2338\" class=\"wp-image-2338 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Kindness-is-contagious-300x268.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"268\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/268;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2338\" class=\"wp-image-2338 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/drdavidhamilton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Kindness-is-contagious-300x268.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"268\" \/><\/noscript><p id=\"caption-attachment-2338\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">image: created by Dr David R Hamilton<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Kindness is highly contagious. It\u2019s more contagious, in fact, than the cold.<\/p>\n<p>The contagiousness of kindness is powered by what\u2019s known as \u2018elevation\u2019, a description coined by social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. It\u2019s a sense of warmth, satisfaction, expansion, even gratitude. It\u2019s the feeling we feel when we do something kind, but also when we receive kindness or even witness it.<\/p>\n<p>Research by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, using a business game as a model, showed that kindness is contagious to at least 3 degrees of separation.<\/p>\n<p>This means that when you do something kind for someone, they will likely be kind (or kinder) to someone else (1 degree), and the recipient of that kindness at 1 degree will be kind or kinder to someone else (2 degrees), and the recipient at 2 degrees will be kind or kinder to someone else (3 degrees).<\/p>\n<p>In real life, it\u2019s much more interesting. When you are kind to someone, given the average degree of interaction we have in a typical day, that person is likely to be kind (or kinder) to around 5 people over the rest of the day, on account of how you made she or he feel. That\u2019s 5 people at 1 degree of separation from you. Think about it. When someone last showed you kindness, didn\u2019t you find yourself being a little kinder to others afterwards, whether in your attitude, words, or actions?<\/p>\n<p>But each of those 5 people will likely be kind (or kinder) to 5 further people, which means 25 people impacted at 2 degrees of separation from you. Now, each of those 25 are also likely to be kind or kinder to 5 further people each, so that\u2019s 125 people at 3 degrees of separation from you. Of course, the numbers aren\u2019t exact; sometimes a person will be kind to more than 5, sometimes less, sometimes it\u2019s more than 5 in a single act. I\u2019ve estimated that it just averages out at about 5 per person. This is illustrated in the image above.<\/p>\n<p>In case you ever wondered how much of an impact you have, let me suggest that you\u2019re changing the world every day. Every day!<\/p>\n<p>Your acts of kindness sends out ripples that impact people at 2 and 3 degrees away from you, people you won\u2019t even meet in your life, yet whose days are a little lighter simply because of something you might have said or did for another person. You are far more important in this world than you think you are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kindness is highly contagious. It\u2019s more contagious, in fact, than the cold. The contagiousness of kindness is powered by what\u2019s known as \u2018elevation\u2019, a description coined by social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. It\u2019s a sense of warmth, satisfaction, expansion, even gratitude. It\u2019s the feeling we feel when we do something kind, but also when we receive&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[45,33,179],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>If you ever feel like you don&#039;t make a difference - David R Hamilton PHD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kindness is highly contagious. It\u2019s more contagious, in fact, than the cold. 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