Credit: George Hodan/public domain Providing help to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers can mitigate the impact of daily stressors on our emotions and our mental health, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. 
 
 "Our research shows that when we help others we can also help ourselves," explains study author Emily Ansell of the Yale University School of Medicine. "Stressful days usually lead us to have a worse mood and poorer mental health, but our findings suggest that if we do small things for others, such as holding a door open for someone, we won't feel as poorly on stressful days." 
 
 We often turn to others for social support when we're feeling stressed, but these new results suggest that proactively doing things for others may be another effective strategy for coping with everyday worries and strains. 
 
 "The holiday season can be a very stressful time, so think about giving directions, asking someone if they need help, or holding that elevator door over the next month," Ansell adds. "It may end up helping you feel just a little bit better." 
 
 Laboratory-based experiments have shown that providing support can help individuals cope with stress, increasing their experiences of positive emotion. To investigate whether this holds true in the context of everyday functioning in the real world, Ansell and co-authors Elizabeth B. Raposa (UCLA and Yale University School of Medicine) and Holly B. Laws (Yale University School of Medicine) conducted a study in which people used their smartphones to report on their feelings and experiences in daily life. 
 
 A total of 77 adults, ranging from 18 to 44 years old, participated in the 14-day study; people with substance dependences, diagnosed mental illness, or cognitive impairment were not included for participation. 
 
 The participants received an automated phone reminder every night that prompted them to complete their daily assessment. They were asked to report any stressful life events they experienced that day across several domains (e.g., interpersonal, work/education, home, finance, health/accident) and the total number of events comprised the measure of daily stress. They were also asked to report whether they had engaged in various helpful behaviors (e.g., held open a door, helped with schoolwork, asked someone if they needed help) that day. 
 
 The participants also completed a 10-item short-form of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, a well-validated measure of experienced emotion, and they were asked to rate their mental health for that day using a slider on a scale that ranged from 0 (poor) to 100 (excellent). 
 
 The results indicated that helping others boosted participants' daily well-being. A greater number of helping behaviors was associated with higher levels of daily positive emotion and better overall mental health. 
 
 And participants' helping behavior also influenced how they responded to stress. People who reported lower-than-usual helping behavior reported lower positive emotion and higher negative emotion in response to high daily stress. Those who reported higher-than-usual levels of helping behavior, on the other hand, showed no dampening of positive emotion or mental health, and a lower increase in negative emotion, in response to high daily stress. In other words, helping behavior seemed to buffer the negative effects of stress on well-being. 
 
 "It was surprising how strong and uniform the effects were across daily experiences," says Ansell. "For example, if a participant did engage in more prosocial behaviors on stressful days there was essentially no impact of stress on positive emotion or daily mental health. And there was only a slight increase in negative emotion from stress if the participant engaged in more prosocial behaviors." 
 
 The researchers note that additional studies will be necessary to determine whether the findings hold across ethnically and culturally diverse populations. 
 
 A particularly important avenue for future investigation, the researchers say, is to determine whether actively prompting people to engage in more helping behavior can further improve their mood and mental health. 
 
 "This would help clarify whether prescribing prosocial behaviors can be used as a potential intervention to deal with stress, particularly in individuals who are experiencing depressed mood or high acute stress," Ansell concludes. 
 
 Explore further: Experiencing major stress makes some older adults better able to handle daily stress 
 
 More information: E. B. Raposa et al. Prosocial Behavior Mitigates the Negative Effects of Stress in Everyday Life, Clinical Psychological Science (2015). DOI: 10.1177/2167702615611073 
 
 ||||| Author Contributions E. B. Raposa and E. B. Ansell developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the study design. Data collection was supervised by E. B. Ansell. E. B. Raposa and H. B. Laws performed the data analysis and interpretation under the supervision of E. B. Ansell. E. B. Raposa drafted the manuscript, and H. B. Laws and E. B. Ansell provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission. 
 
 Abstract 
 
 Recent theories of stress reactivity posit that, when stressed, individuals tend to seek out opportunities to affiliate with and nurture others to prevent or mitigate the negative effects of stress. However, few studies have tested empirically the role of prosocial behavior in reducing negative emotional responses to stress. The current analyses used daily diary data to investigate whether engaging in prosocial behavior buffered the negative effects of naturally occurring stressors on emotional well-being. Results showed that on a given day, prosocial behavior moderated the effects of stress on positive affect, negative affect, and overall mental health. Findings suggest that affiliative behavior may be an important component of coping with stress and indicate that engaging in prosocial behavior might be an effective strategy for reducing the impact of stress on emotional functioning. ||||| Those "Practice random acts of kindness" bumper stickers may be preaching more wisdom than we realized. 
 
 While performing small, kind gestures every day helps others, a new study by Yale and UCLA researchers suggests it may also diffuse our own stress, improving our mental health. 
 
 "The take-home message is that when we are stressed and we help others, we can also end up helping ourselves," study author Emily Ansell, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, told CBS News. 
 
 Lab-based studies have shown that giving to others can help people cope with stress and boost their positive emotions, said Ansell, but she and colleagues wanted to investigate whether the same holds true in the real world. They asked 77 adults, ranging in age from 18 to 44, to use a study-provided smartphone to report their daily feelings and experiences over a two-week period. 
 
 Every night, the participants received an automated phone reminder that prompted them to complete a daily assessment: to report any stressful life events they experienced that day at work or school or in their personal lives at home, including any financial problems or health issues. The total number of events was the measure of their daily stress level, said Ansell. 
 
 They were also asked to report whether they had engaged in various helpful behaviors, simple acts such as opening a door for someone else, helping a child with schoolwork, loaning money or an item of value to someone else (clothes, a car, or a tool, for example), or asking another person if they needed help that day. 
 
 The participants also completed a daily survey that measured their emotion, and they were asked to rate their mental health each day, rating it from 0 for poor to 100 for excellent. 
 
 Helping behaviors seemed to buffer the negative effects of stress on a person's well-being, the authors found. Those who reported performing more acts of kindness showed no dips in positive emotion or mental health. And they had lower increases in negative emotion in response to high daily stress. 
 
 "People overall did one or two acts of kindness per day, but what was most important was when they did more than one or two per day, we saw a benefit to their well-being," Ansell said. 
 
 People who reported lower-than-usual helping behaviors also reported lower positive emotion and higher negative emotion in response to high daily stress. 
 
 It was surprising how strong and uniform the effects were across daily experiences, said Ansell, whose research is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. 
 
 Ansell plans additional research involving more ethnically and culturally diverse populations. 
 
 Another avenue for future study, she said, is to determine whether actively encouraging people to engage in more acts of kindness and helpfulness can improve mood and mental health. 
 
 "It may be particularly relevant for people dealing with a lot of stress who are at risk for depression relapse," she said. 
 
 Ansell said the findings are especially appropriate for this time of year, the season of giving. 
 
 "A lot of the time, we find that our daily stress goes up over the holiday season. We have a lot going on. There can be a lot of different social gatherings and things like that. So when you're out and about having a stressful day, think about doing one of these helpful things: help someone out at the store, hold a door or elevator," said Ansell. "It might help you feel a little better in terms of your own mood or stress this holiday season."
– It turns out getting in the holiday spirit can be good for your mental health. A study published last week in Clinical Psychological Science found performing small acts of kindness for others can give us an improved outlook on things and help us to better deal with stress. "Stressful days usually lead us to have a worse mood and poorer mental health, but our findings suggest that if we do small things for others, such as holding a door open for someone, we won't feel as poorly on stressful days," researcher Emily Ansell says in an Association for Psychological Science press release. The findings suggest "prosocial behavior" might someday be a useful course of treatment for people suffering from chronic stress or depression. Previous lab-based studies have shown similar results, but Ansell and her team wanted to see if they held true in the real world, CBS News reports. According to the press release, researchers had 77 adults use their smartphones to report stressful events, acts of kindness, and their emotional state every day for two weeks. CBS reports participants averaged one or two helpful acts per day. But those who logged more than that had improved well-being and were less affected by stress. "The holiday season can be a very stressful time, so think about giving directions, asking someone if they need help, or holding that elevator door over the next month," Ansell says in the press release. "It may end up helping you feel just a little bit better." (A cafe's act of kindness for grieving parents went viral.)