A recent article in the Washington Post by Shankar Vedantam reported some of the benefits of doing altruistic and moral things. In short, more and more research on the brain is showing that doing good makes us feel good (and doing the wrong thing makes us feel bad), and that these altruistic and moral tendencies may be rooted deeply in our biology and our evolutionary past.

Amazingly, doing good things may offer more benefits than just feeling good. Helping out other people may actually make us healthier and live longer. Stephanie Brown and her colleagues conducted an amazing study a few years ago showing that providing instrumental social support (for example, rides to the doctors, child care, etc.) to friends, relatives, neighbors and providing emotional support (showing love and caring) to spouses predicted lower mortality in a sample of older adults. Even more surprising, getting support from others did not relate to mortality after taking into account the support that was provided.

Consider lending a helping hand to others, it will make you feel better and you just might live longer too!

Further Reading:

Stephanie Brown’s work is reviewed at

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030726/fob2.asp

If you want to see the original article you can find it in your local college library

Brown, S. L., Nesse, R. M., Vinokur, A. D., Smith, D. M. (2003). Providing social support may be more beneficial than receiving it: Results from a prospective study of mortality. Psychological Science, 14, 320-327.