Helping Others: Definition, Benefits, & Examples

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

When we help others, everyone wins. Learn more about the benefits of helping others and ways in which we can contribute to the welfare of our fellow humans.

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The human desire to help others is deeply rooted in our neurobiology (Hurlemann & Marsh, 2016). In fact, neuroscience research has shown that helping others activates the “reward” area of our brains (Moll et al., 2006). In other words, when we do something kind for other people, it feels good.​

Helping others can be as simple as holding a door for someone or as extraordinary as donating a kidney. No matter how big or small the act, when we are kind and generous to each other, everyone benefits. Let’s take a closer look at the science behind helping others and some of the ways in which we can put more good into the world around us.

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What Does It Mean to Help Others? (A Definition)

Researchers often define helping others as the intention or the effect of improving the welfare of another without the expectation of material rewards in return. This means that helping others can refer to well-intentioned behaviors that succeed in improving the well-being of another person as well as the well-intentioned behaviors that fall short of their goal. We can’t always be certain that the help we offer will produce the outcome we expect, but if our goal is to contribute positively to the welfare of our neighbors on planet Earth, it’s always worth a try.

Benefits of Helping Others

There are many benefits to helping others beyond the good we put into the world. For example, helping others is associated with greater health, well-being, and longevity (Post, 2014). Research has also shown that helping others can improve self-confidence, self-awareness, self-esteem, and reduced symptoms of depression (Schwartz & Sendor, 1999).
​
If you’re interested in learning more about the psychological benefits of helping others, this video is a great place to start:

Video: Helping Others Makes Us Happier – But It Matters How We Do It​

Helping Others: Psychology Research Studies

The effects of helping others on both the giver and the recipient have been a popular topic of research for decades. There are now numerous studies that demonstrate the psychological benefits of helping others. The body of research is far too vast to describe it all, but here are a few examples.

One study conducted in the ’90s trained individuals with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) to support others with MS through active listening, compassion, and non-directive support (Schwartz & Sendor, 1999). Non-directive support is a therapeutic technique in which the supporter helps the person they are supporting explore their feelings and does not give advice. Both supporters and those being supported completed questionnaires that measured their subjective quality of life 3 times over the course of 2 years. The researchers found that the people providing support actually reported greater improvements in their quality of life over the 2 years of the study than those receiving support.

A more recent study found that individuals who were donating blood reported that the blood drawing procedure was less painful than individuals who were having blood drawn for personal medical purposes (Wang et al., 2020).
​
The World Happiness Report, a yearly publication that uses survey data gathered from around the globe to assess well-being and the factors related to it, reported that donating money to charity predicted greater life satisfaction in nearly all countries around the world (Aknin et al., 2019).

Examples of Helping Others

Helping others can take a variety of forms. Sometimes it’s as simple as holding a door for someone and other times it’s as massive as starting an international non-profit that helps provide food to those in need. A lot of the news stories we see everyday highlight some of the worst aspects of people, but there are examples of people helping each other everywhere if you look for them.

For example, in 2019 the BBC reported a story of Ian Payne, who had relocated from the UK to Uganda. While training with the running group he started, he noticed that the shoes of many of his running mates were in really bad shape, so he started giving away his spare shoes. He asked friends and family to help, and they gladly contributed to the cause. This small act of kindness snowballed into people from all around the world donating their shoes so Ian could pass them on to schools, orphanages, and anyone he saw who was in need. He now keeps a box full of shoes in his car when he is driving around so he is prepared to help others at any moment.

You can read the full story here.

Dominic Miller is another example of a kind-hearted human who found a way to help people on a large scale. Dominic was a 9-year-old boy in Detroit Michigan who was committed to helping others from very early on in life. Every year for Christmas, he would ask for books, pajamas, and toys to give to other children in need. Like Ian Payne, Dominic started off with help from friends and family, but over time, word spread and he now helps thousands of kids in need every year.

You can read the full story here.

One more heartwarming story about helping others comes from the Canadian news outlet Global News. The author of the story tells about a 91-year-old woman dying of cancer who needed repairs on the boiler in her home. The plumber who performed the repair, James Anderson, sent a bill the following day for $0 and an invoice that read: “Lady is 91 years of age. Acute leukemia. End-of-life care. No charges for this lady under any circumstances. We will be available 24 hour[s] to help her and keep her as comfortable as possible.”

You can read the full story here.

How to Help Others

There are as many ways to help people as there are people to help, but here is a list of a few suggestions for how you can help others.

• Random acts of kindness
  
• Community service
  
• Donating (food, blood, money, clothes, etc.)
  
• Letting people know they are appreciated
  
• Active listening
  
• Showing compassion
  
• Volunteering
  
• Mentoring or teaching
  
• Offering physical comfort (like a hug)
  
• Being patient
  
• Lending your voice to someone who is being ignored
  
• Giving compliments
  
• Giving advice when you can
  
• Sharing food
  

Helping Others in Need

Everyone can benefit from a little help from time to time, but there are some people who need help more than others. For example, people who are homeless, those whose homes have been destroyed by a natural disaster, or refugees who have fled their homes due to extreme poverty, war, or other forms of violence may benefit greatly from help in the form of material goods such as money, food, or clothes. You can check out the links below if you are interested in getting involved with helping displaced and homeless individuals in need.

• Help people impacted by a natural disaster.
  
• Help people who are homeless.
  
• Help refugees.

People who are elderly may also be among those who are in particular need of help. Often elderly individuals without familial support need assistance with instrumental activities of daily living, like laundry or grocery shopping, or may sometimes just need a friend to ease their loneliness. Contacting your local nursing home is a great way to find out how you can support this population. For more ways to help, visit elderhelpers.org.

Individuals in the midst of a mental health crisis are also often in need of compassion and support. One way you can be prepared to help people you see who are suffering from a mental health crisis is by being familiar with your local crisis center if you have one. I like to keep the contact information for my local crisis center on my phone, so I’m prepared to help if ever needed. You can find other ways to help through the Mental Health America organization.

Helping Others Achieve Their Goals

If you’ve found success in your career, achieved fitness goals, or realized other ambitions, you can be a big help to others who are striving towards the same or similar aims. Here are a few ways you can contribute to the success of others:

Mentor/ Share what you know
It’s rare that anyone stumbles upon success without learning some lessons. Sharing what you learned on your way to where you are now - the mistakes you made, ways you simplified or organized your tasks, what you did that worked, etc. - can be hugely influential in the ability of others to achieve their goals.

Share your resources and network
Connecting someone to other people who can facilitate their success is also a great way to help someone achieve their goal. For example, if you are trying to help someone achieve a career goal you could introduce them to people who have experience in the sought-after position. Or if you are helping someone whose personal goal is to go to graduate school you could share the materials you used to prepare for the entrance exam.

Help them find opportunities
Helping someone find opportunities is especially valuable when it comes to starting a new career. The experience of trying to get started when every job opening requires that you’ve already worked in that industry for several years can be extraordinarily frustrating and often discouraging enough to drive people to abandon their goals. Helping someone over this initial hurdle can be a life-changing contribution to their long-term success.

Here are a couple of ways you can still help others achieve their goals even if you haven’t achieved success in the same endeavor:

Support and accountability
Offering support and holding the other person accountable for their articulated goals can go a long way in helping them achieve success. Providing support can be as simple as offering words of kindness and affirmation or might be more involved like providing transportation or required resources. Research has shown that holding someone accountable for their goals boosts the probability that they will achieve those goals (Daily et al., 2018). 

Helping people reflect on their experiences​
As Winston Churchill said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” However, success may be impossible to find if we don’t understand our failures. Helping someone reflect on what went wrong and why and giving them honest feedback may be enormously helpful as they stumble toward success.

Jobs Which Help Others

Research has shown that people find their work more meaningful when it serves the purpose of helping others. For example, one research team found that when students were given a typing task that they were told would either benefit themselves, a charity, or someone they knew, the students who were told the task would benefit others found the work significantly more meaningful than the students who thought their work only benefited them (Allan et al., 2017). 

Here are some examples of jobs in which you help others:

• Nursing
• Counseling
• Teaching
• Home health aide
• Personal trainer
• Firefighter
• Translator
• Nutritionist
• Social worker
• Midwife​

Helping Others - Tips for Kids

Contributions to the welfare of society can start at almost any age. Kids who spend time helping others - for example by acting as peer tutors, volunteering for community organizations, or performing random acts of kindness - experience a greater sense of belonging, life satisfaction, and self-esteem (Gebauer et al., 2008; Solomon et al., 2000).
​
For an adorable example of ways in which kids can help others, check out this video:

Video: Helping Others

Celebrities Who Help Others

Many of our favorite movie stars and recording artists leverage their resources to improve the lives of others. Here are a few of the biggest celebrities that are making an even bigger impact on communities in need:

• Angelina Jolie
  
• Mylie Cyrus
  
• Emma Watson
  
• Bono
  
• Selena Gomez
  
• Matt Damon
  
• Justin Bieber
  
• Nicki Minaj
  
• Dolly Parton
  
• Katy Perry
  

Quotes on Helping Others

• “To ease another's heartache is to forget one's own.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Dalai Lama
• “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.” – William Shakespeare
• “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.” ― Barack Obama

Articles Related to Helping Others

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:​​​

• How to Be Kind: Examples, Tips, & List
  
• Altruism: Definition, Theory, & Examples
  
• ​Selflessness: Definition, Examples, & Quotes​​

Books Related to Helping Others​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

• Bringing Out the Best in People: How to Enjoy Helping Others Excel​
  
• The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Success
  
• For Kids: Helping Others: Good Manners and Character

Final Thoughts on Helping Others

The ways in which we can help others are limitless. Whether we donate unwanted clothing, volunteer at a senior center, or spend our lives providing humanitarian aid to refugees, our acts of kindness make a difference in the lives of others as well as our own lives. As Maya Angelou said, “When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”

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References

• Aknin, L. B., Whillans, A. V., Norton, M. I., & Dunn, E. W. (2019). Happiness and prosocial behavior: An evaluation of the evidence. World Happiness Report 2019, 67-86.
• Allan, B. A., Duffy, R. D., & Collisson, B. (2018). Helping others increases meaningful work: Evidence from three experiments. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 65(2), 155.
• Dailey, R., Romo, L., Myer, S., Thomas, C., Aggarwal, S., Nordby, K., ... & Dunn, C. (2018). The buddy benefit: Increasing the effectiveness of an employee-targeted weight-loss program. Journal of health communication, 23(3), 272-280.
• Gebauer, J. E., Riketta, M., Broemer, P., & Maio, G. R. (2008). Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(2), 399-420.
• Hurlemann, R., & Marsh, N. (2016). New insights into the neuroscience of human altruism. Der Nervenarzt, 87(11), 1131-1135.
• Moll, J., Krueger, F., Zahn, R., Pardini, M., de Oliveira-Souza, R., & Grafman, J. (2006). Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(42), 15623-15628.
• Post, S. G. (2014). Altruism, happiness, and health: It's good to be good. Positive Psychology in Behavioral Medicine, 66-76.
• Schwartz, C. E., & Sendor, R. M. (1999). Helping others helps oneself: response shift effects in peer support. Social science & medicine, 48(11), 1563-1575.
• Solomon, D., Battistich, V., Watson, M., Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. (2000). A six-district study of educational change: Direct and mediated effects of the Child Development Project. Social Psychology of Education, 4(1), 3-51
• Wang, Y., Ge, J., Zhang, H., Wang, H., & Xie, X. (2020). Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(2), 950-958.​

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