A footnote today to last week’s news about longtime San Diego TV anchorman Michael Tuck passing away from complications from a stroke at the age of 76.
In a weekend story about his life in the San Diego Union Tribune, Michael Tuck’s wife, Jill, asked that in lieu of flowers, she requests that people offer “an unexpected act of kindness for the voiceless.” Coincidentally, the same week her news anchorman husband died, a news story broke about a study on the impact of random acts of kindness.
The study, done by researchers at University of Texas in Austin, found that people who carry out random acts of kindness underestimate how much their actions affect the recipient. The findings of the study revealed evidence that not only does the recipient of a good deed generally feel more positive, but that they then spread this kindness to others.
And they found that just doing an act of kindness was more important to the recipients than what the actual gift was. One researcher says it’s clear that the performers of an act of kindness underestimate the value of their actions.
The news story about this study says researchers found that kindness can be contagious with the recipients of random good deeds tend to “pay it forward” to others. And during a time when there can be a lot of bad news, that’s just the kind of good news we all can use.
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