The Secret to True Kindness

Research shows it’s measured by the benefit of the doubt

Credit: Mimi Haddon/Getty Images

Babies. They’re such jerks, aren’t they? They wake you up in the middle of the night. They make huge messes for you to clean up. And let’s not forget to mention the inevitable diaper blowouts that happen at all the wrong times. Who do they think they are?

Of course, this is a pretty awful way to think of infants. We were all babies at one point, and if other people hadn’t given us some grace, we wouldn’t have made it to our first birthdays.

Babies, we know, don’t mean to annoy anyone. Even when they make others uncomfortable, we give them a pass because, well, they’re babies. We give them the maximum benefit of the doubt. And unless we’re jerks ourselves, we are kind to them.

Funny how when babies grow up, we stop giving them the benefit of the doubt — or at least we offer a lot less of it. Everyone is just a grown-up baby, but have you noticed how there never seems to be enough kindness to go around?

This is because kindness is measured by the benefit of the doubt.

The closer you are to someone, the more likely you’ll be to see their mistakes as well-intentioned mess-ups rather than attempts to hurt you. Seminal marriage research has shown that for happy couples, the benefit of the doubt flows abundantly in both directions. For example, if you’re in a strong marriage and your spouse fails to press “start” on the dishwasher, you’ll assume they just forgot. This assumption of positive intent promotes an atmosphere of kindness. In a disastrous marriage, however, you’d ascribe the worst intentions to your spouse: They ignored the dishwasher on purpose, just to irritate me. This assumption of negative intent promotes an atmosphere of aggression.

The implications of assuming negative intent can extend beyond the family. Consider the example of the USC professor who was suspended for saying a Chinese word that sounded like a racial slur. The word was nèi ge — which is the English equivalent of saying “umm.” The professor used the word during a lecture on filler words…