According to psychology research out of SFU and UBC, random acts of kindness can be used to alleviate some of the symptoms of social anxiety.
Jennifer Trew, a postdoctoral research fellow at SFU who conducted the study, sees social anxiety as “the fear of social situations where you may be judged or negatively evaluated by other people.”
She elaborated, “This can include social interactions, and can also include performance situations, like giving a presentation or speech in front of people. This can lead to a lot of anxiety for some people, as well as avoidance of these types of situations.”
The study measured the effect of performing random acts of kindness on people with social anxiety. Some of the participants engaged in the acts of kindness, some were engaged in social interactions that they would usually avoid, and then third control group were participants who wrote down what was going on during their day.
Participants were not limited to any specific act of kindness. However, they were given a list of examples they could use, and many different kinds of acts ended with the same positive result. These ranged from something as simple as opening a door for a stranger to interacting with someone online or in person. Trew asked them to “go do things that would help other people out or make other people happy,” and let them interpret that however they chose.
In the end, though the results were as she expected, Trew found them impressive. What the study found was that the participants who performed the acts of kindness reported less avoidance of social situations in relation to the other groups.
Being kind helped them stave off negative expectations associated with those situations. They weren’t as focused on avoiding things that might make people look at them negatively, meaning they had decreased levels of social anxiety.
Trew concluded, “It helps to reduce their levels of social anxiety and, in turn, makes them less likely to want to avoid social situations and negative social outcomes such as embarrassment.”
