Kindness Is More Infectious Than Covid-19
The neuroscience of treating people well
We’ve heard how deadly Covid-19 is. We all now know science terms we’d never imagined learning, like “R naught” (the term for how quickly a virus replicates) and “flatten the curve.” This pandemic has also infected us with fear, frustration, anger, and anxiety — which have left many of us feeling exhausted and defeated, wondering when this will all end.
With no clear end in sight, uncertainty infects our brains, urging us into action. Instances of pent-up aggression are increasingly aired on the internet when a bystander catches someone going off the rails, yelling at someone else for not wearing a mask in public (or standing their ground in defense of their “freedom” to choose not to wear one).
We all know what it’s like when someone offends our sense of right and wrong and we stew on it until we blow our top at that person — or some innocent stand-in toward whom we direct our displaced aggression. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as decades-old research has shown that when we ruminate about something, we become more aggressive toward others.
We’re so busy judging each other for not doing the right thing that many of us have missed something. Something big. Something more contagious than the virus itself. Something that will…
