Research Projects
The following 14 teams, representing 9 academic disciplines, have received grants from BKI to pursue their own kindness-related research throughout the 2025-26 academic year. These researchers will also meet in monthly seminars to build an interdisciplinary community at UCLA dedicated to understanding and promoting kindness.
Restorative Practices in Academic Medicine
Our project advances the scholarly study of kindness by demonstrating its tangible effects on institutional culture through Restorative Practices in Academic Medicine (RPAM).
Team: Eraka Bath, Olivia Diaz, Monique Trinh, Deborah Lehman, Xavier Cagigas
Using Misinformation Corrections to Promote Kind Discourse on Polarizing Topics
This project seeks to understand the downstream effects of misinformation correction activities on affective polarization and willingness to engage in civil dialogue on divisive topics.
Team: Rachel Berwald, Blair Graeme
Transcending Differences through Conversation
Our team’s goal is to identify communicative strategies that promote successful interactions and foster connection across social divides, be they demographic or attitudinal.
Team: Tanya Stivers, Amanda Morris, Giovanni Rossi
The Effects of Prosocial Behavior on Mental Health
Our research aims to extend those findings by examining the psychological factors that drive its mental health benefits and comparing them to self-directed acts of kindness. In a second study, we will test the effectiveness of a mindset intervention designed to increase engagement in prosocial behavior and its subsequent positive effects.
Team: Naomi Eisenberger, Ph.D., Maria Naclerio
Love and the Self
This project is about psychoanalytic accounts of love and the self, or, more specifically, psychoanalytic accounts of the self in love.
Team: Jurgen Lipps
The Language of Generosity: How Policy Framing Impacts Altruistic Behavior
This research project seeks to identify one contributing factor: the way in which recent policy changes are framed. Prior research has established that individuals are more motivated to donate to causes they care about under conditions of “policy threat” – i.e. when they believe their policy preferences are under future threat – and less motivated otherwise.
Team: Connor Warshauer, Josh Goetz, Salma Mousa
Enhancing Kindness: The Impact of Shared Reality Expectations on Social Interactions
This research investigates when expectations of shared perspectives form and how those expectations shape perception and behavior.
Team: Steven Stroessner, Sydney Tran
Cultivating compassion for distant others: the role of attention and empathy in prosocial learning from the effects of past decisions
Our project examines how learning from experience can enhance people’s moral concern for distant others, thereby promoting kindness, compassion, and altruism.
Team: Glen Spiteri, Falk Lieder
Finding an Audience for Kindness
This project consequently uses news consumption data from social media to examine the possibility that there is an ‘audience’ for kindness.
Team: Stuart Soroka
Balancing personal distress and compassion to motivate prosocial behavior: A neurobiological mechanism
While empathy can, and oftentimes does, motivate the shift towards kindness, “too much” of it can instead lead to personal distress and shift toward focusing on oneself.
Team: Russell Noble, Naomi Eisenberger
Can Practicing Conversations with AI-iHELP Virtual Patient Simulations Increase Empathy and Compassionate Communication Skills?
The goal of this project is to develop and test an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven communication skills training module, the AI-based interactive Humanism E-Learning Program (AI-iHELP), where healthcare professionals and trainees can interact with virtual simulated patients (VSPs) to rehearse empathic and compassionate communication skills.
Team: Yue-Ming Huang, Andrew Shaner, Rachel Dajani, Daniel Fessler, Ashley Ingram-T’Siobbel, Ken Lay, Lillian Gelberg, Jennifer B. Plotkin, Sae Takada, Dan Weisman, Shimona Gupta
AI-Mediated Communication: Testing the Limits of Algorithmic Kindness
This project empirically tests whether AI-mediated kindness promotes positive interpersonal evaluations or backfires due to algorithmic aversion bias and concerns surrounding authentic intent.
Team: Merabi Chkhenkeli, Daniel Posner
Kindness and Compassion in Conflict: Exploring Nurses’ Perspectives and Approaches
In this mixed-methods study, we will explore how nurses operationalize compassion and kindness, towards themselves and others, in challenging dynamics of conflict, hostility, and violence.
Team: Kirsten Buen, MarySue V. Heilemann, Melissa Powell
Kindness Across the Lifespan: How Life Stage and Kinship Influence Moral Decision-Making
This project explores how age, sex, and parenthood shape moral decision-making in situations that require choosing between helping kin, supporting the broader community, or protecting one’s reputation.
Team: David Aguilar, H. Clark Barrett
Affiliated Graduate Students Fellows
The following four graduate students will pursue their own kindness-related research throughout the 2025-26 academic year. They too will participate in BKI monthly seminars.
F.I.E.R.C.E – Fostering Internal and External Respect, Compassion, and Equanimity: A Mindfulness-Based Intervention to Cultivate Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity in Healthcare Professionals
The study will evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention inspired by the Buddhist Four Immeasurables practice on reducing depression (primary outcome), burnout, perceived stress, and biological markers of inflammation, and enhancing psychological well-being, mindfulness, and sleep quality (secondary outcomes) in 100 healthcare workers.
Team: Tyrus Korecki
Uncovering Pathways to Kindness: A Critical Realist Analysis of How U.S. University Students Engage in the Common Good
This study addresses this gap by employing a critical realist approach to examine how U.S. university students actively involved in social impact organizations manifest their commitment to the common good.
Team: Subeen Jang
Putting “Rational Compassion” into Practice: An Ethnography of Effective Altruism
This doctoral dissertation research will investigate how rationality and compassion are co-constructed in the Effective Altruism movement, a social movement that aims to transform philanthropy through the conversion of individual donors to its principles and practices.
Team: Sarah Paust
Ethics of Care and Radical Empathy in Archiving Incarceration Experiences
This project examines the ethics of archiving first-hand experiences of incarceration, with particular attention to how care practices are embedded in this work.
Team: Anna Robinson-Sweet
