It's Simple! Watch Someone Else Pay It Forward and You'll Want to Be a Do-Gooder Too

W-a-a-a-a-y back in 2000, the film Pay It Forward was the feel-good movie of the year after Haley Joel Osment's character did three good deeds and got the world's paying-it-forward mojo going. Well, it turns out that there was a scientific reason, after all, that the movie was so popular — and the notion of "paying it forward" caught on.

Scientists call it "elevation" — that positive, uplifting sentiment we experience when we see someone do something nice or helpful for someone else. But, it wasn't until recently that scientists learned that that little buzz of good feeling doesn't end there; it, in turn, generates further acts of good will. According to a study just reported in Psychological Science, simply watching someone else do good makes us more inclined to do good ourselves. In other words, seeing someone put quarters in another person's parking meter, watching someone offer a cut in the checkout line to another customer or simply witnessing a person lending a helpful hand, prompts us to feel warm, fuzzy feelings that, in turn, make us more giving.

Volunteers in the study either watched an emotionally neutral TV clip of a nature documentary or an uplifting segment of The Oprah Winfrey Show which showed grateful musicians thanking their mentors and guess what? The Oprah viewers were much more likely to agree to volunteer for another research study than the nature watchers. But scientists wondered: would Oprah folks really follow through with their volunteer offer?

We all know it's one thing to say you're going to do something; another to actually buckle down and do it. So they gathered another group of study subjects and asked them to watch one of three different TV segments: a British comedy clip, the nature documentary, or the same elevating Oprah clip and then all the study subjects were asked by the research assistant to stay and fill out an additional — and unexpected — questionnaire. Researchers found that the Oprah viewers were TWICE as likely to help the research assistant and complete the questionnaire than either the nature or comedy watchers. Which makes one wonder: How much pay-it-forward spirit would have been levied if the subjects had watched the episode when Oprah announced, "Everybody's getting a car!"

Watch, listen and pay it forward!

By Kevin Gavin via Wikimedia.