The science of soul

Patients at a California health maintenance organization are being prescribed generous behaviour as part of a program called Rx: Volunteer, one of various new research projects described by Stephen Post in his book Why Good Things Happen To Good People, out next week. Dr. Post chronicles the link between doing good and living a longer, healthier life.
“The science shows that we're hardwired to be giving,” he says. “We're talking here about a one-a-day vitamin for the soul.”

A growing number of researchers are supporting his claim with studies that show how the human body benefits from everything from gratitude to generosity. For example, psychologist Robert Emmons studied organ-transplant recipients and found that the more gratitude they felt, the faster they recovered.

A 2001 study of trauma survivors by psychologist Russell Kolts found that gratitude was associated with lower symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And a Wellesley College study that has tracked 200 people since the 1920s, interviewing them for five hours every decade, found that people who were charitable in high school had better physical and mental health in late adulthood. “The connection for mental health is particularly strong, but the physical health results are also highly significant,” psychologist Paul Wink notes.

Helping other people can aid in personal relaxation and stress as well.

The movement toward studying human goodness has even spawned its own diagnostic manual, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. It was written to contrast the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which doctors use to classify human behaviour by pathology.
Dr. Post, whose institute offers funding to many of these studies, believes that people who want to prolong their lives should work on their attitude, the same way they would change their diet or exercise routines.

“The truth is ours we have a duty to be true to ourselves. Smile at people you usually never even looked at talk to people u hated,” Quebec student Pierre-Olivier Laforce wrote in a Facebook post quoted in The New York Times.