Kindness in Action: UCLA Health’s Humanitarian Aid to Beirut

The need for assistance remains in Lebanon's capital, so a team of volunteers gathered hundreds of pounds of medical supplies. Thousands of masks, face shields, and safety goggles. Hundreds of bottles of hand sanitizer and soap, syringes, sutures,…

Staying Happy in Unhappy Times

Pulling from the empirically based insights covered in her course Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, Cassie Mogilner Holmes offers tips to stay a bit happier during these less-than-happy times. To read more, click here.

Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism

Professors Akihiro Nishi and Michael Irwin published a paper entitled, Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism, regarding clinical evidence suggesting that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion…

The Loss Of Public Goods To Big Tech

Safiya U. Noble is an associate professor at UCLA, co-director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and a faculty advisor to the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute. She is the author of “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines…

Bedari Kindness Statement on Racial Justice

We at the Bedari Kindness Institute mourn the death of George Floyd and express our deepest condolences to the Floyd family and all his relations. The Bedari Kindness Institute strongly and unequivocally condemns racist acts of violence and…

Statement on Racial Justice

We at the Bedari Kindness Institute mourn the death of George Floyd and express our deepest condolences to the Floyd family and all his relations. The Bedari Kindness Institute strongly and unequivocally condemns racist acts of violence and…

A Global Lifeboat: Evolution and Kindness in the Time of Coronavirus Podcast

Daniel Fessler, Anthropologist and Director of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, discusses how an understanding of humanity's past and present can help us to meet the personal, social, and political challenges posed by the novel coronavirus…

UCLA Sociology Professors advocate for “physical” rather than “social” distancing

In an opinion piece that was published today on CNN.com, UCLA sociology professors, Dr. Cecilia Menjívar, Dr. Jacob G. Foster, and Dr. Jennie E. Brand, recommend using the more accurate term “physical distancing” rather than the misleading…

Why being kind is good for you

Daniel Fessler, Director of the Bedari Kindness Institute, tells Christiane Amanpour how being kind to others can lower your blood pressure and lessen depression. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/01/10/kindness-mental-health-ucl…

The Kindness Podcast

There are really exciting things happening in the world of kindness research. UCLA recently established the Bedari Kindness Institute, where experts will work on promoting a more humane world and exploring how and why being nice to others reduces…