Category Archives: communication of emotions

How Gratitude Benefits Our Relationships

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Gratitude benefits are culturally normative in all major cultures, which encourage people to be grateful and express their gratitude to others. The cultural norms of gratitude have been highly valued across civilizations and cultures. In the ritual of “giving thanks,” people expressed their gratitude to God, spirits, mother nature, and others.

Interpersonal relationships commonly involve the experience and expression of gratitude. Gratitude entails more than simply saying “thank you.” It entails acknowledging and appreciating others and what they do for us. Gratitude is the thankful love—the love for what another person did or does for us. Gratitude is an important constituent of love.

Gratitude strengthens our connections with others. When individuals experience gratitude, these emotions strengthen their sense of belonging to and connectedness with others. They feel fewer boundaries between themselves and others. In another article, I explained what gratitude is and why it is important for our lives and well-being.

Gratitude Benefits Make Our Relationships Better

Social bonding entails giving and receiving on both sides. These actions are essential for the proper formation of obligations between individuals and the maintenance of interpersonal bonds within human communities.

Gratitude involves social obligations as well as personal benefits for our relationships, self-esteem, and wellbeing. Feeling and expressing gratitude improves our mood and makes us feel better. In many ways, it improves our lives and interpersonal relationships.

A Study of Gratitude Revealed:

The recent qualitative study by the researchers from Sofia University in California, Patty Hlava and John Elfers, explored how people experience the meaning of gratitude in their lives and what positive changes they get when they experience and express gratitude. In particular, they found that

Gratitude Strengthens our Connections with Others

When people experience gratitude, these emotions enhance their feelings of connectedness with others. They feel that their boundaries with another person have become shorter and softer. A range of their feelings involves the sensation of being physically close, not separate or alone. They get a sense of community, enjoy deep communication, and have the feeling of merging with something larger than themselves.

Here are the examples that authors provide to illustrate these feelings:

That feeling of being enveloped, or embraced, or being touched. It’s like they just know you, like they’ve been there forever, and you’ve been with them forever. (Goldie)

It’s more a sense of feeling connected to people, not that they’re giving me something, a material object but that they’re giving me a part of their heart or something. (Allison)

It was a sense of connectedness. I felt that even sort of our heartbeats sort of synced, just a oneness about the whole situation. (Sue)

(Hlava & Elfers, 2014, p. 438).

By experiencing and cultivating the attitudes, feelings, and expression of gratitude, people experience transformation in their personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal relationships. They experience a sense of belonging to a group, community, or something else outside themselves.

How People Experience the Meaning of Gratitude

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Reciprocal giving and receiving have the adaptive function of creating interpersonal obligations and maintaining personal bonding between people. In another place, I talked more about what gratitude is and why it is important in our lives. However, the meaning of gratitude can be different for different people. For example,

“Beneath the warm feelings of gratitude resides an imperative force, a force that compels us to return the benefit we have received”

(Komter, 2004, p. 195).

What Is the Meaning of Gratitude?

Gratitude is a personal experience that people live by in their daily social lives. It plays a functional role within the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. The concept of gratitude is quite broad and includes cognitive, affective, expressive, and behavioral processes.

What People Experience When They Experience Gratitude

Patty Hlava and John Elfers, the researchers from Sofia University in Palo Alto, California, USA, conducted a qualitative study of how people experience gratitude.

The authors interviewed 51 participants, ranging in age from 18 to 80 years, who likely engaged in a full range of embodied experiences of gratitude. The sample was ethnically diverse, with a first language other than English. Among participants, the majority were Caucasians, with less representation of Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Hispanic, African American, and other groups.

Researchers asked participants to recall a specific experience of gratitude. They asked to focus on their physiological and somatic experiences during these feelings. Researcher asked:

  • “In what way does the feeling of gratitude show up in your body?
  • Where specifically do you experience the sensations?”
(Hlava & Elfers, 2014, p. 438).

Researchers asked people to think about their lived experience of gratitude, developmental history, personality orientation, and how they thought gratitude affected their relationships.

The study revealed patterns of emotions that include somatic experiences and cognitive appraisals. Among those are the feelings of love, joy, awakening, awe, release, and being blessed.

What People Experience When They Experience Gratitude

Researchers revealed in their study several specific features of the somatic experience of gratitude. These include:

  • Sensations in the Heart and Chest/Warmth
  • Release
  • Awakening
  • Comfort, Security, Acceptance
  • Blessed
  • Joy
  • Love
  • Witnessed
  • Presence
  • Thankful

Power Poses Can Make You Feel Confident

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The senses of touch, body positions, and movements play a significant role in both romantic relationships and sexual encounters. Our physical attraction is evident in body postures, sitting close to one another, cuddling, and kissing.

How good is it to show that you are assertive in your body language?

Your “power poses” and confident behavior can be beneficial in relationships. Traditional cultures tend to praise the assertive behavior of men but not of women. Feminists may think differently.

What if you do not have an assertive personality? Can you become more assertive?

The studies have shown various ways to become more assertive in your attitudes, behaviors, and relationships. One of these is a seemingly simple technique: you just need to regularly train so-called “power poses” (Carney et al., 2010; Körner et al., 2020; 2022).

What Are the “Power Poses”?

The “power poses” are the wide-body poses, the superman-like poses. Researchers examined the effects of two types of body positions:

  • expansive body positions that reflect dominance, for example, standing or sitting in an expansive way and taking up as much space as possible;
  • upright postures, for example, standing or sitting straight (versus slouched); that body position is the nonverbal display of prestige.
ROBERT KÖRNER AND ASTRID SCHÜTZ, A Stronger Self Through Wide Body Positions, March 10, 2023

What the Studies of the Effects of the “Power Poses” Showed

Some researchers found that power posing increases people’s self-esteem and confidence, while others did not find these effects (Körner et al.).

Early studies, for example, showed that adopting wide-body positions for one or two minutes

“can make you feel powerful, risk-oriented, and increases the male sex hormone testosterone and decreases the stress hormone cortisol.”

Robert Körner and his colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 128 studies conducted between 1982 and 2022 with more than 10,000 participants on the effects of power poses. The cultural samples of participants were largely from the U.S. and European countries.

How Power Pose Affects Motivation and Behavior of People

The results of a meta-analysis of 128 studies conducted with more than 10,000 participants on the effects of power poses have indicated that

“Expansive body positions make people feel more self-confident, powerful, and in a better mood. People who engaged in dominant poses felt somewhat more confident, powerful, and positive than people who stood or sat in a slumped or contracted way. “

Most researchers investigated the differences in effects between high- and low-power poses. They usually did not include a neutral body position in their studies.

The effects of expansive and upright body positions were the same; both of these body positions affected people’s self-perceptions.

These body positions of people also impacted their real behavior, affecting how they became action-oriented and risk-prone through the poses. However, the effect of body positions on behavior was not robust.

The power poses, on the other hand, had almost no effect on blood pressure, heart rate, or hormones.

Body Positions Have Different Effects for People in Western and Eastern Societies

According to multiple studies, gender and age make no differences in the effects of body positions. However, studies found the effects of body positions on motivation and behavior in Western countries, such as Germany and the U.S. However, these effects were somewhat smaller in Eastern countries such as Malaysia and Japan.

Do “Power Body Positions” Really Help?

Robert Körner and his colleagues concluded that

“the adoption of expansive body positions for just one or two minutes can make people feel better.”

ROBERT KÖRNER AND ASTRID SCHÜTZ, A Stronger Self Through Wide Body Positions, March 10, 2023

So, the power body positions and upright postures can help people as a simple technique to increase their subjective experience of confidence, yet they do not necessarily change their behavior or relationships.

Why Is Gratitude Important?

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Gratitude is more than just saying “thank you.” It entails recognizing and appreciating the people and what they do for us. It is the appreciation for whatever our lives bring us. Gratitude makes us feel better and lifts our mood. It improves our lives and relationships in many regards.

As Buddha, the religious teacher of South Asian culture (the 6th or 5th century BCE) and founder of Buddhism, taught,

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”

– Buddha, the teacher and founder of Buddhism, a religious and philosophical system of southern and eastern Asia, live in India, approximately the 6th–4th century BCE

National Cultural Traditions of Gratitude

The customs of gratitude appear to be highly valued across civilizations and cultures. People expressed their appreciation in the ritual of “giving thanks” to God, spirits, mother nature, and others.

People of many societies in history and nowadays celebrate Thanksgiving or similar festival holidays on various dates. It is a good cultural custom to give thanks and appreciate what we get and what others give to us.

As William Bennett, an American politician and commentator, told

“Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that thankfulness is indeed a virtue.”

– William Bennett, American teacher and scholar, born 1943, New York, USA

American Thanksgiving is probably among the most important holidays of the year. Americans have greatly celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday for centuries.

As John F. Kennedy, an American politician and the 35th president of the United States, once said,

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”

– John F. Kennedy, (1917–1963), American political leader and president of the United States

Or in another place, he said:

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”

– John F. Kennedy

Even though it falls on different dates, people in other countries also celebrate this Thanksgiving holiday. Among those countries are Canada, Grenada, Liberia, and Saint Lucia. Germany and Japan both celebrate festivals with names that are very similar.

Gratitude Is the Appreciation of Giving and Receiving

In many cases, gratitude is clearly involved in interpersonal relationships. Social bonding implies reciprocal giving and receiving. These kinds of actions are important for the proper creation of people’s obligations and the maintenance of interpersonal bonding in human communities.

An appreciation of giving and receiving is a vital part of fair and equitable relationships. This is why it is very important to express gratitude for what other people do for us. Gratitude is not only a kind gesture; it is frequently necessary for a normal and adequate relationship.

As Aafke E. Komter, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, wrote,

“Beneath the warm feelings of gratitude resides an imperative force, a force that compels us to return the benefit we have received”

(Komter, 2004, p. 195).

How People Experience Gratitude

How do people subjectively experience gratitude? The intensity and expression of gratitude are determined by an appraisal of the situations, actions, contexts, and outcomes of what a benefactor did for a recipient. People may express gratitude differently depending on how they perceive the value of what another person has done for them. Appreciation also varies depending on the benefactor’s intention and the degree of sacrifice applied in giving (McCullough & Tsang, 2004). People tend to be especially grateful and express gratitude when they receive something they want and when they feel that the giver was sensitive to their personal needs and wishes. (Algoe, Haidt, & Gable, 2008).

As an American writer and humorist, Mark Twain (1835–1910) once noted,

“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”

– Mark Twain, 1835–1910), American writer

People experience gratitude as thematic patterns of somatic feelings and an array of appraisals. The experience of gratitude also involves various emotions, such as joy, love, awe, happiness, awakening, release, peace, security, and feeling blessed. People frequently experience the somatic response to gratitude, the feelings of overwhelming emotions, and tearfulness. These emotions are frequently accompanied by a sense of taking your breath away, bursting with emotion, and fullness (Hlava & Elfers, 2014). 

These feelings and emotions are associated with sensations of being emotionally overwhelmed. Here are some examples:

“I start tearing because I’m so—it’s an overwhelming emotion. It’s an overflowing with joy kind of feeling.”

(Joe)

“My eyes fill with tears, but I do not feel sadness. I feel at a loss for words and am filled with gratitude and love.”

(Zoe)

“I just burst into tears, and I was crying, I mean, in addition to just the positive feelings of just gratitude and excitement.”

(Louise)

How Gratitude Affects Our Relationships

Gratitude is very beneficial for our relationships and can transform interpersonal connections.

Expression of gratitude plays an important role in relationship building (Algoe et al., 2008) and relationship maintenance (Hlava, 2010; Kubacka, Finkenauer, Rusbult, & Keijsers, 2011). Gratitude affects the experience of relationship boundaries between “self” and “other” (Hlava & Elfers, 2014). The expression and feeling of gratitude strengthen our bonds with those who have helped us (Algoe & Haidt, 2009).

Please, remember this saying of William James (1842–1910), an American philosopher and psychologist:

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

– William James (1842–1910), American psychologist and philosopher

Happy Thanksgiving!

What Effect Do Laughter and Smiles Have on Our Relationship?

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Smiling and laughing are natural ways for men and women to show other people how they feel. However, different cultures may have different rules for how individuals should express these emotions. In some Western cultures, such as the European-American one, people tend to express their emotions frequently and openly. People from other cultures, such as East Asians, laugh and smile considerably less frequently, and they are more reserved in their emotional expressions (Karandashev, 2021).

Evolutionary Functions of Smiling and Laughing

Professor Adrienne Wood and her colleague proposed that smiling and laughing could serve certain psychological functions in their evolutionary origins. They were designed to convey certain communicative messages. Among those are (1) the function of rewarding prosocial behavior, (2) the affiliative function, and (3) the function of asserting dominance in relationships.

How Smiling and Laughing Affect Our Behavior

Smiles and laughter have different effects depending on the context of actions and interactions. The effects of smiles and laughter also depend on who is smiling and laughing. When a competitor smiles at you, it can always feel dangerous. However, the studies of Adrienne Wood and her colleague suggest that the effect of smiles and laughter on the observer is partially due to physical form:

  • how symmetrical or open-mouthed the smile is,
  • how melodious or nasal the laughter is.

Professor Wood and her colleagues have looked at the social functions of smiles and laughter in a variety of ways and contexts.

Do Smiling and Laughing Improve Our Relationship?

The question of research interest is “how laughter and smiles affect our daily relationships.”

Many men and women believe that laughter and smiles help improve their interpersonal relationships. Others think they should be more reserved in their expressions of emotion and not smile too often. People from different cultures may have different explanations and cultural stereotypes in this regard.

What Did Smiling and Laughing Studies Reveal? 

 Dr. Jared Martin conducted one study in which people gave stressful speeches while an observer smiled at them in rewarding, affiliative, or dominant ways. He discovered that the stress hormone cortisol was highest when their speeches were greeted with dominance smiles and lowest when they were greeted with reward smiles. It appears that smiles are not always well received. They can be stressful at times.

In the most recent effort, researchers brought people together through laughter and smiles. Over a thousand people were shown short videos of actors smiling in positive, neutral, or dominant ways. Then, the researcher gave them two short recordings of laughter, both of which had been produced by actors, and asked them to choose the one they thought conveyed a message most like that of the smile.

Researchers discovered that people frequently pair reward smiles and laughs together, as well as affiliation smiles and laughs, but rarely pair dominance smiles and laughs.

Evidently, the relationship between a smile and an expression of humor is more nuanced than we realized.

What Do We Still Need to Know About Smiling and Laughing?

More research is needed to determine whether smiles and laughter can convey the same messages. When you’re on the phone and the recipient can’t see you, can you replace a polite smile with a polite laugh? Can you tease as well with a smile as with a laugh?

What we do know for the time being is that smiles and laughter are versatile behaviors that help us influence the emotions, thoughts, and actions of others.

For the time being, we know that smiles and laughter are adaptable behaviors that allow us to influence the emotions, thoughts, and actions of others. Smiles and laughter work in accord with humor and improve our love relationships in the early stages of a relationship as well as over time as the relationship progresses.

Why Do We Need Laughter and Smiles?

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Smiling and laughing are the natural expressions of human emotions in relationships with others. The cultural norms regarding their expressions, however, vary across cultures. People in some Western cultures, such as the European-American one, commonly use them. People in other cultures, such as Eastern Asians, are more reserved in their expressions of laughter and smile much less frequently (Karandashev, 2021).

The question of research interest is “Why do we need laughter and smiles?”

Researchers most often conduct scientific studies of laughter and smiles in Western cultures, such as England and the USA.

Here is one example of a study that British anthropologist Robin Dunbar and Austrian psychologist Marc Mehu conducted in 2008 (Dunbar & Mehu, 2008). They found that strangers who were talking to each other smiled and laughed more than once every two minutes.

When Do We Laugh and Smile? 

We smile when we’re happy, excited, shy, confused, recognizing someone we don’t know, winning, or losing. We laugh when we are amused, nervous, angry, greeting a puppy, teasing, or just don’t know what to say.

Men and women usually smile and laugh when they are with other people. They intuitively anticipate that others can see their smiles and laughter. And they expect, either implicitly or explicitly, that their smile and laughter will influence other people who see and hear these emotional expressions.

Why Do We Laugh and Smile? An Evolutionary Perspective

Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, Adrienne Wood, and her colleagues are investigating how smiling and laughing can be viewed as evolutionarily ancient behaviors conveying a wide range of messages (Wood et al., 2018; 2022). They propose that smiles and laughs can serve three functions:

(1) reward,

(2) convey affiliative intentions,

(3) assert dominance.

The Rewarding Function of Laughter and Smiling

These are the smiles and laughs that make you feel good. They show how happy the smiling and laughing person is. They also thank the other person for making this person happy. It’s nice when people smile and laugh with us, especially when we know it’s because of something we did.

This is why marketing companies put happy faces on ads for everything from car insurance to toilet paper: they want people to think well of their products.

Laughter also makes people feel good, which is why laugh tracks are used in comedies.

The Evolutionary Origins of Smiling and Laughing

These gratifying smiles and laughs could evolve from mammalian “play signals.” The animals’ play signals make it clear that they mean no harm. One can see that in some ways, smiles and laughter serve the same purpose. And these signals are rewarding—they make the recipient feel good. So, they help extend the playful interaction.

The Affiliative Function of Laughter and Smiling

Yet, most smiles and laughter are not rewarding expressions of happiness. This could be our quick, closed-lip expression when greeting a passing stranger or expressing sympathy to a friend. Or, we could use the polite laugh to ease awkward tension in a group meeting.

These expressions are the shadows of those big, happy smiles and laughs. They borrow the message of friendly, harmless intentions from reward signals. Therefore, we may call these smiles and laughs “affiliation signals.” Smiles and laughter, elicited by nervousness, embarrassment, sexual attraction, friendliness, and politeness, all have the common goal of increasing affiliation.

Do All Smiles and Laughter Make People Feel Good?

Some smiles and laughter, however, are far from making the recipients feel good. They can make them feel rather bad.

We all know how it feels when people laugh at us instead of with us. People sometimes tease, mock, make fun of, or criticize someone while smiling and laughing. One may call these smiles and laughter “dominance,” because they show that someone is better than someone else.

At first glance, it seems strange to think that a play signal that means nothing bad could be changed into something not so good. But when people smile and laugh like this, they are saying,

“I think you are completely harmless and not serious.”

There may not be a better way to show that you are in charge than to act like you don’t care about someone.

Many men and women believe that smiling and laughing improve their interpersonal relationships. Others believe they should be more reserved in their emotional expressions and not smile as much. In this regard, people from different cultures may have different explanations and cultural stereotypes.

Can Sharing Bad News Improve Close Relationships?

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Men and women in close relationships hope to experience joyful and optimistic times together. They are happy to share everything good that happens in their lives. The people close to them are happy to hear the good news. It is widely held that sharing in a relationship—telling another about one’s emotional experiences—makes people feel better.

What about bad news? Does it make sense to share with others in their close relationships something bad that happened to us? Some may want to avoid spoiling their good moods.

Does it help people themselves when they share with others their bad news? People often feel worse after discussing negative events that have occurred to them. They perhaps replay the negative experience in their minds.

Something even worse may occur. Social sharing tends to lower the mood of the person listening to the disclosure. But why is social sharing so popular if it has emotional costs for both sharers and listeners? In their recent article at Character & Context Blog, German scholars Antje Rauers and Michaela Riediger from the University of Jena discuss this controversy.

People Tend to Share their Bad News with those Close to Them

For decades, scientists have tried to answer this question. Studies of intimate relationships provide a possible clue. Research shows that sharing stories about feelings can bring people closer together. As a result, perhaps the positive effects of sharing are not related to mood but rather to the quality of the relationships between people. Perhaps in times of crisis, the act of telling one another bad news strengthens our bonds with one another.

People usually share meaningful experiences with close friends or family members. To explore how and why they do this, Antje Rauers and Michaela Riediger designed a study with the goal of capturing social sharing as it happens in real life. Researchers asked 100 romantic couples over cell phones about their experiences as they went about their daily lives. During a period of three weeks, both partners recorded their current mood and how close they felt to their partner six times per day. Every time, partners also documented if they had any problems and whether they had shared with their partner their experience. Researchers were particularly interested in situations in which people had indeed just experienced a hassle. Then, they compared how people felt if they told their partner about these incidents with how they felt if they kept that bad experience to themselves.

What Did Researchers Find in Their Study?

Unsurprisingly, people felt worse following adversity than they did in the absence of such events.

Yet, researchers wanted to know if social sharing helped people emotionally recover from the hassles. Perhaps not necessarily. Some did not feel better after sharing, while some did. Some men and women also felt worse after hearing their partner’s story, whereas others did not. In other words, social sharing resulted in both emotional gains and losses for the couples.

Their sharing, however, significantly increased their relationship’s closeness. Both men and women experienced these benefits. And both the sharers and the receivers experienced these benefits. Researchers also examined how people in close relationships felt prior to sharing.

The main conclusion was that sharing did make people feel closer, no matter how close they had felt before. 

Social Sharing Affects Future Closeness in Relationships

Here is another question of interest. Are they fleeting experiences, or do they accumulate over time to increase closeness? How long do these increases in relationship closeness last?

According to the theory, social sharing generates virtuous cycles of mutual trust and even more sharing, which increase relationship closeness over time. Researchers asked the couples about their relationships 2.5 years later.

Results showed that those who had frequently shared their problems with their partners reported greater relationship closeness 2.5 years later. People who rarely shared with their partners, on the other hand, lost some of their closeness over time. Thus, the author’s findings suggest that social sharing can help to strengthen relationships both in the present and in the future. This psychological discovery explains why, despite the emotional costs, social sharing is so popular. Sharing bad news may not necessarily help to improve our mood, but it can aid in the formation of our close bonds.

How Kindness Makes People Healthier

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Kindness is at the foundation of what it means to love someone. Being kind is an essential expression of love for another person. In general, acts of kindness and love help us maintain and cultivate happy and healthy relationships with others. When we are thoughtful toward one another and do nice things for other people, it makes those other people feel good.

The recipient of such kind love experiences positive emotions and a sense of well-being. Moreover, the giver of such kind love also benefits from these feelings and actions. The selfless acts you perform do, in fact, provide you with more psychological benefits than you might think at first.

Kindness makes people not only happier but also healthier. It is important to recognize that our physical and mental health can improve when we are kind, considerate, and compassionate toward other people.  Kindness, in whatever form it takes, appears to elicit positive and eliminate negative physiological and psychological responses in people. Kindness in relationships tends to buffer their negative emotions and stresses. Studies have shown that interventions that focus on kindness are good for physical and mental health, preventing the common cold, and dealing with pain.

Kindness Tends to Prevent Common Colds

It may be surprising, but kindness can help to reduce the prevalence of the common cold. According to some evidence, people who perceived clinicians showing greater empathy experienced (1) increased levels of immune responses, (2) less severe symptoms of the common cold, and (3) lower durations of the common cold. The findings from randomized controlled trials are encouraging (Rakel et al., 2009). Kindness can help keep you from getting sick, even if it’s just the common cold. 

The Positive Impact of Kindness on Pain Relief

It has been known for quite a long time that not only physiological processes but also mental ones can influence the intensity with which one experiences pain. Consistent with this evidence, the use of psychological treatments and specific interventions has been utilized and shown to be beneficial for those suffering from long-term pain. Many of these treatments are based on active self-kindness, such as mindfulness. Cognitive behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy have widely used the benefits of kindness.

Compassion-focused Therapy of Pain

For example, compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is based on the power of kindness. This is a type of psychotherapy that merges the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) with concepts of Buddhist psychology. It also employs some ideas from social, developmental, and neuroscience to teach compassion. Compassion-focused therapy is especially beneficial for people who tend to frequently experience shame and high self-criticism. This makes it difficult for them to feel warm toward and be kind to themselves or others.

One study, for example, looked at how interventions based on compassion and loving-kindness affected how people thought about and felt about persistent pain (Penlington, 2019).

Some people tend to over-evaluate their daily life or past difficulties. Consequently, their soothing systems can be relatively weak. In such cases, kindness and compassion can be a good way to develop these calming systems. Participants in the study practiced compassion-focused exercises, helping them to recognize certain maladaptive patterns in their thoughts and behavior and develop adaptive ones. Researchers came to the conclusion (Penlington, 2019) that compassion-based interventions like mindfulness and loving-kindness exercises could be used in everyday pain management. 

The Benefits of Kindness for the Kind and Loving Person

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The core quality of love is kindness. Being kind to someone else is an act of love. Overall, kindness and love strengthen our positive social connections. All the kind things that we do for other people make them feel good. Such love with kindness brings good feelings and well-being not only to the loved one but also to the person who gives love and kindness. It is worthwhile to note that by doing good and kind things to others, we also benefit psychologically. Is it true? Yes, the kind things you do bring you more psychological benefits than you might think.

How Do You Feel When You Do Something Kind and Good for Someone Else? 

Being kind and loving brings a lot of benefits, not only to the other person whom you love but also to you.

Acts of kindness make you feel more confident, happy, and hopeful. They boost self-esteem and personal satisfaction in one’s life. Such good feelings work as self-rewarding incentives, motivating you to do more and more kind and loving things for others.

People who are kind and loving more frequently experience pleasant feelings. Studies show that being kind and loving makes us feel better. When we do good things for other people, we can feel good and even happy. Doing good things for other people, like helping them out, makes us feel what’s called an “other-praising moral emotion.” This is a term for the good feelings you get when you see other people doing good things, like being generous, selfless, loving, and kind.

Your kind and loving behavior toward others may also inspire others to perform acts of kindness similar to those that they have personally experienced. Therefore, the kindness of love can be contagious. It tends to be reciprocated and transmitted to others. This way, kindness has the power to make the world a better place to live.

All Kinds of Kindness Make Life Happier  

Here is an example of a study I described elsewhere that showed that acts of kindness enhance positive emotions, moods, and wellbeing in those who act kindly. The research findings revealed that those who engaged in acts of kindness felt significantly higher levels of satisfaction with themselves and life. Moreover, the more acts of kindness people perform, the happier they feel. Across groups of participants and experimental conditions, the effect was consistent. Kindness to others, kindness to oneself, and seeing others be kind all make people happier (Rowland & Curry, 2019).

Another study, which I described elsewhere, examined how social media kindness inspires people to do good things. The study demonstrated that watching kindness-related media increased feelings of calmness, gratitude, and happiness. It also reduced people’s irritability. The acts of kindness in the media inspired viewers, making them feel touched and moved. Overall, being kind, even viewing kind media, makes people feel better and more generous (Fryburg et al., 2021).

Emoji Love and Other Emotions in the Virtual World

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In modern culture, it seems easy to guess what “heart” and especially “red heart” mean. Guess what? Love! So, the corresponding symbols are common in modern virtual world. The emoji ❤️ adopted the same meaning social media messages. The red heart emoji is a classic image to express love and romance. The read heart ❤️ and two hearts 💕 are among the popular heart emoji used on Twitter (What Every Heart Emoji Really Means by Keith Broni, Jeremy Burge, Feb 11, 2021).

What is the best emoji for love? It depends on personal preferences. Nevertheless, some believe that among the most popular are

  •  ❤️: Red Heart. …
  • 😻: Smiling Cat with Heart Eyes. …
  • 😍: Smiling Face with Heart Eyes. …
  • 😘: Face Blowing a Kiss. …
  • 💕: Two Hearts. …

What Emoji Are Used for Love Across Cultures?

In a survey for World Emoji Day, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Duolingo and Slack, researchers showed respondents various emoji and asked what meaning they were most likely to associate with them. The survey also investigated how emoji usage and meaning differ across countries. It was discovered that emoji can mean different things in different cultures around the world.

Chris Melore presented an interesting review of this international survey.

For example, let us look at how the “face throwing a kiss” (😘) is used. For “romantic love” or “platonic love”?

It was found that this emoji is popular among U.S. Americans, Indians, and Japanese people in different ways.

Indians prefer to use it more frequently for romantic love than for platonic love (52% vs. 27%).

Americans are also slightly more likely to use it as a sign of romantic love than of platonic love (34% vs. 26%).

However, Japanese preferences are the opposite. They tend to use the kissy face less frequently for romantic love than for platonic love (16% vs. 30%).

It is worthy of note that the “slightly smiling face” (🙂) frequently expresses “general positivity” (39%) and “feeling happy” (38%). These meanings are among the top uses for this emoji globally. However, this emoji may express less positive emotions than one may think.

Emoji are also frequently used to express sentiments of care and support. It was especially noticeable during the recent COVID-19 pandemic times. People often use the heart (❤️) and similar emoji to show love and support. Globally, differences between age groups exist in this regard. Across many cultures, younger generations mention that the emoji they send to someone are often misunderstood by the recipients. Young people of Gen Z mentioned this more frequently, at 31% among all respondents, than millennials, at 24% of respondents.