Title: Want a Happier 2025? It Comes Down to Two Words, a Neuroscientist Says.

This story is a part of our Ask a Professor series, in which Georgetown faculty use their research to inform trending conversations, from the latest pop culture hits to research breakthroughs and critical global events shaping our world.

The key to happiness is simpler than we think. 

Helping others — even tiny acts of kindness — makes us happier, says Abigail Marsh, a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience who studies altruism.

“It drives me bananas when I see advice lists about how to be happier that center on self-focused, often solitary activities like listening to music, taking a bath or buying yourself something,” she said. “They might give you a momentary burst of pleasure but not enduring happiness.”

According to Marsh’s research, donating money, petting a stranger’s dog or volunteering boosts your mood and motivation to do good. Over time, that warm, fuzzy feeling we get from helping others can have long-term benefits.

“We experience vicarious pleasure from helping — literally a little echo, or simulation, of the happiness we see in others,” she said. “It gives us a sense of pride in having done something we know to be worthwhile. And most importantly, it strengthens our social relationships and sense of connectedness to other people, which is essential for real happiness.” 

Marsh and fellow researcher Shawn Rhoads (G’22) reported that even observing others act altruistically has its own ripple effect: It can improve our mood, energy and desire to do good things for others, among other benefits. 

So why does helping others make us feel good? And how can we make it a habit, especially when we feel down or unmotivated?

Marsh, who leads Georgetown’s Laboratory on Social & Affective Neuroscience, takes us inside the brain and uncovers why we feel good when we do good — and how we can make it a lasting habit. 

Why does it make us feel good when we do good for others? 

We are such fundamentally social creatures. Many scientists consider humans “self-domesticated apes.” This means we evolved to be unusually mutually interdependent compared to our primate cousins. Our interdependence required us to evolve a high capacity for trust and relatively friendly, non-aggressive temperaments. Being so mutually interdependent means we are naturally predisposed to find helping those around us rewarding. We are built that way. We perceive other people, especially people we like and trust, as extensions of ourselves who we naturally empathize with and whose welfare we want to promote just as automatically as we want to promote our own welfare.

What’s happening inside our brains when we perform altruistic acts? 

The brain is of course complicated, as is altruism, so I will just highlight a few of the key processes! First of all, there are populations of cells in regions that include the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (which lies a few centimeters behind your forehead) that calculate the value of your choices for others. Coordinated activity between those regions may motivate us to help others. 

Then, when you do things that help others, activity increases in brain regions involved in reward learning and reward anticipation. This may be related to what is called the “warm glow” of helping. These regions include the ventral striatum, where the neurotransmitter dopamine is released when we learn a behavior is rewarding. Increased activity in this region is associated with wanting to repeat rewarding activities. 

What are some of the benefits we may experience from helping others?

There is now abundant evidence that helping others makes us happier, for multiple reasons. We experience vicarious pleasure from helping — literally a little echo, or simulation, of the happiness we see in others. It gives us a sense of pride in having done something we know to be worthwhile. And most importantly, it strengthens our social relationships and sense of connectedness to other people, which is essential for real happiness. 

Helping others really does lead to enduring well-being, although the paradox is you have to be helping because you sincerely want to help. If you are only helping out of a sense of obligation or to reap selfish gain, it may not lead to similar benefits.

Does it matter what kind of altruistic act we perform? For example, donating money versus helping someone in person? Or a heroic act versus a small act of kindness?

I don’t know if we have good evidence about this. But my hunch is that it probably differs for different people. Some people find it maximally rewarding to help in so-called “effective” ways, where they know that their time or money is doing the most possible good. But this kind of helping is by necessity impersonal and abstract. So many people find it more rewarding to help in more concrete, local ways where you really see the tangible good you are doing, and where you can form connections with others who are helping, and with those being helped. 

I think it’s kind of like exercise: The best kind of exercise is the kind you like doing, so you do it more. Do whatever kind of helping you like doing, and then you will do it more!

Are there long-term benefits to helping others consistently? 

One of the interesting things my lab recently found in a study conducted by my Ph.D. student Paige Amormino is that prosocial people tend to have more prosocial friends! In our study, we found that people who have donated kidneys to strangers have close friends who are also much more altruistic than the average person. This could be for more than one reason, but psychologists know that like attracts like (we call this homophily). So one long-term benefit to being more prosocial could be that you will find yourself having a nicer social circle as a result.

In your co-authored chapter in the 2023 World Happiness Report, you wrote that even observing acts of altruism could improve our well-being. How so? 

First, as my former Ph.D. student Shawn Rhoads and I describe, observing or just learning about acts of altruism can result in what is called “moral elevation.” This experience is associated with improved mood and energy, the desire to connect with others and do good things for them, and to be a better person. 

Second, and relatedly, observing others doing good things reduces our cynicism about our fellow humans and makes us more trusting and optimistic. Third, and also relatedly, when we observe others engaged in altruism, it affects our perception of what the social norms are and makes us more likely to help ourselves. For example, if everyone you know donates blood regularly, the likelihood that you will as well goes up. Everyone should make a point of reading the Washington Post’s “Inspired Life” series, which I find reliably leads to all of these effects!

What advice do you have for cultivating a habit of altruism? Are there opportunities you see for performing small acts of kindness on campus?

Oh, always! I would say there are two basic strategies. The first is to decide what kind of a person you want to be and the kind of life you want to live and make choices that are consistent with those goals. So many students on campus already work to help others, of course — Georgetown students seem to be helpers by nature. I really do see cura personalis as a motto that runs very deep at Georgetown. But for anyone who is not already helping, pick a cause you care about that is associated with an activity you enjoy and decide how much time you can devote to it per month. 

And don’t neglect the small moments of need or small ways you can improve others’ welfare. One big tip is: Break the habit of walking around with your face in your phone. It causes you to miss so many opportunities for connection. I’ve watched students nearly step on my very adorable (not small!) dog in Red Square because they were so engrossed in their phones. So they missed a chance to pet a cute, friendly dog, which would have made him happy, and me happy, and them happy. 

If you aren’t paying attention, you will also not notice if someone drops something you could pick up, or is struggling with a heavy door. Just recently, several Georgetown faculty and staff and I helped a woman struggling with a serious asthma attack right in front of White-Gravenor that we almost didn’t notice. Even just smiling at an acquaintance or a cute toddler walking by makes their day, and your day, a little bit better. Those kinds of things have ripple effects.

Do you have any tips for motivating yourself to help others when you don’t feel like it or are down in the dumps?

Here is a big one that applies to many situations: Don’t wait for the mood to strike. The key to a good life is developing good habits that you keep up regardless of your mood. Then our behavior can change how we feel for the better. 

So come up with solutions that will help you form and maintain good habits. Join an organization or faith community that creates structure and provides regular opportunities to help. Develop specific if-then plans, like: If I go for a walk, then I will bring a bag I can use to pick up trash and beautify my community. If I make eye contact with a stranger on my walk, then I will smile at them and say something friendly. (People should definitely do this more.)

Do you practice helping others in your own life? Do you have any personal altruism goals for 2025?

Yes, of course! My family gives to both “effective” global organizations and to local organizations doing good work in the community, like So Others May Eat. I also run a nonprofit organization that I co-founded, called the Society for the Prevention of Disorders of Aggression that helps individuals and families affected by disorders of aggression, who suffer terribly and whose needs are grossly neglected by public and private mental health organizations — which means they too rarely receive the evidence-based treatments that could help them lead better lives (which would, in turn, make communities safer). 

I also do some advocacy work for kidney-donation-related groups, for example, urging my representative in Congress to pass the End Kidney Deaths Act.

I also do both formal and informal volunteer work for my children’s school districts and in my neighborhood. And like most people, I often find the most rewarding kinds of helping are those spontaneous moments when you see a need and do something about it on the spot. I helped a lost girl find her mom in the train station recently. I have taken more than one animal to City Wildlife. I pick up trash. It’s about noticing need, really.