Children, like adults, tend to underestimate how welcome their random acts of kindness will be
Margaret Echelbarger, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
From expressing gratitude to surprising someone with a mug of hot chocolate on a cold day, adults tend to underestimate how positively others will respond to their random acts of kindness. I’m a behavioral scientist who teamed up with my research partner Nicholas Epley on research that showed how children and teens share this misunderstanding.
We gave 101 kids who were 4-17 years old and 99 adults who were visiting.