Seeing Others Helped Spurs Similar Kindness
What we see strongly determines how we think, feel and ultimately act. A common sense statement but when you understand the specifics you have a powerful tool for priming and influencing behavior change.
Take for example the research results in ScienceDaily on Play it Forward: Elevation Leads to Altruistic Behavior. They demonstrate that if I see someone being helped it will cause me to feel elevation (a positive feeling of being uplifted) and that in turn causes me to help others. To quote:
“The results of this second experiment were striking — the participants who viewed the uplifting TV clip spent almost twice as long helping the research assistant than participants who saw the neutral TV clip or the comedy clip, indicating that elevation may lead to helping behavior.”
This suggests that cognitive designers able to create products, services, experiences or other artifacts that elevate, will produce not only a distinctly positive think-and-feel but will also trigger prosocial behaviors.
