The Rabbit Effect

It was New Year’s Eve, and my friends had just adopted a little girl, 4 years old, from China. The family was going around the table, suggesting what each thought the New Year’s resolution should be for the other. Fei Fei’s English was still shaky. When her turn came, though, she didn’t hesitate. She pointed at her new father, mother and sister in turn. “Be nice, be nice, be nice,” she said.

Fifteen years later, in this dark age for civility, a toddler’s cri de coeur resonates more than ever. In his recent remarks at the memorial service for Congressman Elijah Cummings, President Obama said, “Being a strong man includes being kind, and there’s nothing weak about kindness and compassion; nothing weak about looking out for others.” On a more pedestrian level, yesterday I walked into the Phluid Project, the NoHo gender-neutral shop where T-shirts have slogans like “Hatephobic” and “Be Your Self.” I asked the salesperson, “What is your current best seller?” She pointed to a shirt in the window imprinted with the slogan: “Be kind.”

So I’m not surprised that there’s been a little flurry of self-help books on basic human decency and what it will do for you.

Kindness is doing small acts for others without expecting anything in return. It’s the opposite of transactional, and therefore the opposite of what we’re seeing in our body politic today.

I’d probably pick up any book that includes the words “foreword by Jimmy Carter,” because I know being in his company will make me feel better. OUR BETTER ANGELS: Seven Simple Virtues That Will Change Your Life and the World (St. Martin’s, 240 pp., $24.99), by Jonathan Reckford, C.E.O. of Habitat for Humanity, has such a foreword. When President Carter isn’t writing his own historical or inspirational books, he’s building homes with Habitat for Humanity for those who desperately need them. “Our Better Angels” lays out the seven virtues that can translate into action: Kindness, Community, Empowerment, Joy, Respect, Generosity and Service. This is a nifty way to organize a lot of great stories about people Habitat for Humanity has helped and to drive home the very important point that performing a service helps you, too — even if the service is done out of duty, not love. Because in a certain sense, duty can become love — as the British in general, and fans of “Downton Abbey” in particular, can surely tell you.

Which may be why I was drawn to a book called COSY: The British Art of Comfort (HarperOne, 176 pp., $19.99), by Laura Weir. The American market has been inundated with bossy little books in which other countries tell us how to behave. (Korea, please stop telling me to “empty my mind” so I can begin to claim the power of nunchi. I am 58. I can barely hold on to the few thoughts I have.) But O.K., I’m an Anglophile, and I was drawn to this one. “Unlike hygge, which is beautiful in essence, but too often seen through the lens of interior design magazines, being cosy is completely personal, affordable and democratic. … Cosy is your authentic self undone.” I particularly enjoyed the chapter “Cosy and Kind,” where Weir indirectly lays out the connection between duty and love, with advice like “Become the stealth de-icer: rise early and chuck down de-icing solution on the drives and steps of your elderly neighbors’ homes. They don’t need to know, but you will.” Alas, she also talks a great deal about creating small dolls and knitting woolly hats for charity. My Anglophilia stops short of knitting. Can I just send a check?

Victoria Turk’s KILL REPLY ALL: A Modern Guide to Online Etiquette, From Social Media to Work to Love (Plume, 224 pp., paper, $15.99) is one of the more amusing digital-etiquette books you’ll read. Simply put, social media has created a new universe of ways we can be mean to one another. So digital good manners are a great kindness, whether they apply to friends, work or love. (I like one of Turk’s definitions of love: “Texting them even though your battery’s at 5 percent.”) And now, I know I will never leave anyone in a specific circle of acquaintances out of a group chat, even if I think he or she is uninterested; let that person opt out himself. Let’s say it’s a book club chat. By God, everyone must be in there, even if Janet has questionable opinions about Nabokov and Leslie can turn every club meeting into a discussion of her grandchildren. These, like many of Turk’s lessons, are kindnesses I can live with.

Perhaps the most interesting (because the most personal, while also the most steeped in data) is Kelli Harding’s THE RABBIT EFFECT: Live Longer, Happier and Healthier With the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness (Atria, 272 pp., $27). For instance: In other wealthy nations over the past few years, life expectancy has been rising, while in the politically turbulent United States the trend has moved the other way. In 2016, we ranked 43rd in the world for life expectancy. Coincidence? We spend a fortune on health care, Harding notes. So what’s missing?

Well, as it turns out: everything. To dismiss the role that issues like abuse, discrimination and loneliness play in health, Harding writes, is “like fixing up an airplane engine and ignoring that the pilot is on his third drink at the bar and a massive storm is overhead.”

The book’s title refers to a 1978 study in which researchers were trying to establish the relationship between high cholesterol and heart health. Here rabbits were fed a very high fat diet in an effort to mimic human heart problems. The rabbits did, in fact, get a host of heart problems — except for the rabbits under the care of one researcher who cuddled and talked to them while they were fed. The differences in health were so marked that the study was replicated, with the only difference in rabbit care being some extreme petting and cooing; and the results were the same.

Harding, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, has long observed in her own practice that illness alone is not a predictor of outcome. There are reams of studies about stressors and hormonal changes in the body with illness, but many boil down to this: Are you alone when you’re sick, or do you have people sending you flowers and bringing you magazines? If you do, you’re going to get better faster. (There was even a study showing that nature makes a difference: Patients with the same illness in the same hospital who look out on trees versus looking out on a brick wall went home a day earlier.) Harding goes on to show how our interconnectedness helps us stay healthier. By the time she got to this piece of advice I couldn’t help tearing up: “If you see a person on the street asking for money, offer her a snack or water. Ask her name. If you don’t have anything, acknowledge her request and tell her you wish you could help. You may be the only kind person she encounters today.”

Fei Fei had it right. Even if, at 4 years of age, she didn’t know she was echoing Henry James, who reportedly once said to his nephew: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”

-- Judith Newman, New York Times, January 8, 2020

Judith Newman is the author of “To Siri With Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son and the Kindness of Machines.”