Microkindness and the Science of Small Acts

Henry Ericsson, The Fazer Bar

A new paper explores how small acts of kindness may contribute to human flourishing.

A new paper published in the International Journal of Wellbeing, written by Tim Lomas and Tyler Vanderweele, explores how small acts of kindness may move through social life. The paper introduces the concept of “microkindnesses”: brief, low-cost gestures that benefit another person and are motivated, at least in part, by genuine warmth or goodwill. These might include a smile, greeting, expression of thanks, or moment of friendly acknowledgment.

The concept is developed in contrast to the more familiar idea of microaggressions. If brief interactions can communicate disregard, exclusion, or hostility, then brief interactions may also communicate respect, welcome, and care. The paper argues that these positive moments deserve more attention, especially because they may influence not only the person who receives them but also the wider social environment.

We focus especially on smiling as a possible example of microkindness. A genuine smile is brief and usually involves little cost. Yet it can signal goodwill, ease social tension, and invite a response. One person’s smile may be returned by another, and that second smile may influence the next interaction. In this way, small gestures may contribute to broader patterns of social connection.

The paper frames this question as part of a “positive epidemiology” of compassion. Epidemiology usually studies the distribution and spread of disease or risk. Positive epidemiology asks similar questions about positive states, behaviors, and practices: Where do they occur? What makes them more likely? How might they spread? In the case of microkindness, the question is whether small acts of goodwill can be transmitted across relationships, groups, and communities.

Zolo Palugyay, In a Market

We are careful not to overstate the claim. Microkindness is not a cure for social division, loneliness, or injustice. Nor is every apparently kind gesture necessarily received as kind. Context, culture, relationship, and power all shape how such actions are interpreted.

Still, the idea is important for the study of human flourishing. The Human Flourishing Program’s framework understands flourishing as multidimensional, including happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial and material stability. Microkindness is especially relevant to character and virtue and to close social relationships, but it may also affect the emotional tone and meaning of everyday life.

The paper suggests that flourishing may be shaped not only by major institutions and life circumstances, but also by ordinary interactions repeated across time. Families, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities are partly formed through small signals of recognition or disregard. Microkindness gives researchers a way to study one side of that daily moral ecology.

Future research will need to examine when microkindnesses are most likely to occur, how they are received, whether they are passed on, and what kinds of environments make them more common. The paper offers a conceptual starting point for studying how compassion may be communicated in small acts and how those acts may contribute to more flourishing communities.

Read the paper: Contributions towards a positive epidemiology of compassion: Exploring the transmission dynamics of acts of microkindness