“Frequent and Universal: New Study Reveals the Prevalence of Random Acts of Kindness” (55 characters)

A recent study has revealed that people frequently rely on one another for assistance, with participants signaling their need for help approximately every two minutes. Conducted by researchers from the Netherlands, Australia, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the study examined behaviours in urban and rural areas across various countries to gain insight into the cultural influences on cooperative actions. The research, published in Scientific Reports, found that individuals from different cultures often answer requests for help far more frequently than they refuse them. When individuals did refuse to help, they generally offered an explanation for their decision. This shared tendency among diverse cultures suggests that humans may possess similar cooperative behaviours at their core, regardless of cultural differences. The researchers analysed over 40 hours of video recordings of daily life, involving more than 350 people in geographically, linguistically, and culturally diverse towns and rural villages in Scotland, Italy, Australia, Russia, Ecuador, Poland, and Ghana. They identified over 1,000 requests occurring on average once every two minutes in which a person signaled the need for help, such as by directly asking or visibly struggling to complete a task. The results showed that people generally responded positively to low-cost requests for assistance, such as sharing of everyday items or assisting with household tasks, rather than refusing to help. The study further revealed that people were seven times more likely to comply with requests for assistance than to decline, and six times more likely to comply than to ignore such requests. The research indicates that being helpful is instinctive in human beings, with cultural differences potentially playing less of a role in the micro-level of social interactions.