The Kindness Counts Study[1]
3
acts of kindness per week
4
weeks of practice
19
classrooms studied
Result: significantly greater increases in peer acceptance. Not charm. Not social skill. Kindness.
Peer acceptance is associated with academic achievement, reduced bullying, greater school engagement, and better mental health. Kindness produced that acceptance. This should change how schools think about kindness instruction. It is not a decorative value. It is a functional capacity that produces measurable outcomes for the child who practices it and for every child around them.
What Kindness Actually Is
A multidimensional construct rooted in care, empathy, respect, and prosocial motivation. Researchers describe it as “baseline altruism” — altruism in all conditions, not just suffering.[2][3]
Helping
Assisting with a task, offering time or skill without being asked
Sharing
Giving part of what you have — materials, space, turns, credit, attention
Including
Making room. Inviting someone to join. Refusing to exclude. Noticing who is alone
Comforting
Recognizing distress and responding — sitting with someone, offering words or presence
Encouraging
Saying something that helps someone keep going. Recognizing effort. Expressing belief
Forgiving
Releasing resentment. Accepting an apology. Moving forward without holding it permanently
Each is a learnable skill, not just an impulse. A child taught specific kind behaviors has a richer repertoire than a child only told “be kind.”
How Kindness Develops
The roots are early
Sharing food/toys from 8 months, helping with tasks from 12-18 months, comforting from ~18 months. Children do not need to be taught to care. The impulse is present from the beginning of life. They need instruction in how to express it as situations become complex.[3]
Concrete and immediate
Kindness as specific, visible actions: sharing a toy, helping pick up pencils, including someone in a game. Genuine but situational — kind when they see an opportunity and feel moved to act. Focus on recognizing opportunities, naming the action, and building habit through repetition.
Complex and intentional
Kindness that requires courage (standing up for someone), self-control (being kind to someone unkind to you), empathy (recognizing unspoken needs), and invisible kindness (acting without credit).
The Kindness–Well-Being Feedback Loop
Acts of kindness
Increased well-being
More kindness
A classroom where kindness is regularly practiced is a classroom where well-being is self-sustaining. The culture maintains itself with less teacher effort than the initial investment required to build it.[1][4]
The reverse: where kindness is rare, dynamics default to competition, exclusion, and self-protection. Nothing in the system is self-sustaining.
What Kindness Is Not
✗ Not niceness
Niceness is surface-level social performance. A nice child can smile while excluding someone. Kindness requires genuine concern for the other person's well-being.
✗ Not weakness
Kindness often requires strength: including someone against group pressure, telling a hard truth gently, forgiving, being kind to someone who wasn't kind to you.
✗ Not self-sacrifice
Healthy kindness includes boundaries. A child can be kind and say “I need a turn too.” Kindness without self-respect becomes people-pleasing — a coping strategy, not a virtue.
Teaching Kindness as a Skill, Not Just a Value
Move beyond “be kind”
“Be kind” names the goal without providing the mechanism. Teach specific behaviors:
"When you see someone sitting alone, walk over and say 'do you want to sit with us?' That is kindness."
"When someone drops their books, stop and help. You don't need to be asked. That is kindness."
"When someone is having a bad day, say 'I noticed you seem sad. I'm here if you want to talk.' That is kindness."
Build empathy as the engine
Kindness without empathy is performative. Empathy is the capacity to notice another person's experience and be moved to respond.
"How do you think Jayden felt when he had no one to sit with at lunch?"
"What would it feel like to be the new student who doesn't know anyone?"
"When you helped her with the math problem, what do you think she felt?"
Practice regularly, not occasionally
The effects came from regular practice — three acts of kindness per week over four weeks — not from a single event.[1] A “Kindness Week” is better than nothing. Consistent, integrated practice throughout the year through a structured curriculum becomes a habit. Kindness practiced once a year remains an event.
Teach kindness toward people you don't like
“You do not have to like everyone. You do have to treat everyone with respect. Kindness does not require friendship. It requires recognizing that every person deserves decent treatment.” This is where kindness intersects with fairness.
Teach invisible kindness
Clean up something that isn't your mess without announcing it. Help when the teacher isn't looking. Leave an encouraging note anonymously. Invisible kindness is intrinsically motivated — the purest form because it exists without external reinforcement.
Building a Classroom Culture of Kindness
Catch it and name it
“I noticed that when the new student walked in, you moved your things to make room for her. That is kindness. You saw someone who needed something and you acted without being asked.”
Specific, named recognition teaches the entire class what kindness looks like. The recognized child learns kindness is valued. Every other child learns what they can do.
Create structures that produce kindness naturally
Kindness challenges
“This week, do one kind thing for someone you don't usually play with.” Track without competition.
Kindness journals
Write about kind things done or received. Writing reinforces observation, which reinforces behavior.
Cross-boundary grouping
Partners/groups that build connections across social boundaries. Familiarity reduces the distance that prevents kindness.
Model kindness yourself
The most powerful instruction is the teacher's own behavior. A teacher who speaks kindly, helps without being asked, apologizes when wrong, and expresses genuine care teaches kindness through every interaction.
"I noticed you had a hard day yesterday. How are you doing today?"
"I made a mistake on the schedule. I'm sorry."
"Thank you for helping Marcus. That was kind and I'm sure it meant a lot."
Use stories to explore complex kindness
Stories during weekly SEL instruction provide safe contexts for the harder dimensions:
"The character was kind to someone who had been mean to them. Why was that hard? Was it worth it?"
"They included the excluded kid even though the popular group was doing the excluding. What courage did that take?"
"They did something kind and nobody noticed. How did they feel? Why do it if nobody sees?"
What Kindness Teaches
Self-awareness
Noticing your capacity to help. Recognizing when you have something to give. Understanding genuine care vs. performance
Self-management
Overriding self-interest to help. Being kind when tired or frustrated. Managing the impulse to look away
Social awareness
Seeing needs. Recognizing when someone is struggling, lonely, or excluded. Understanding your effect on others
Relationship skills
Building connections through prosocial behavior. Maintaining friendships through consistent care. Repairing through forgiveness
Decision-making
Choosing to act for someone else's benefit. Evaluating what is needed. Making the kind choice when the easier choice is available
The Character Connection
Kindness appears in virtually every state character education mandate — Alabama, South Carolina, Iowa — more frequently than almost any other trait.[5] A program integrating character with SEL teaches it as both a value (why care matters) and a skill (how to recognize needs, manage self-interest, and act). The value provides motivation. Empathy provides perception. Skills provide capacity.
The Bigger Picture
Kindness is the trait that connects every other trait to other people.
Honesty
without kindness = cruelty
Fairness
without kindness = cold justice
Courage
without kindness = aggression
Responsibility
without kindness = duty without heart
Kindness is what makes every other character trait relational. It turns individual virtue into community well-being.
Teach the specific behaviors. Build the empathy. Practice it weekly. Name it when you see it. Model it yourself. And watch the feedback loop do what the research says it does: produce a classroom where kindness, well-being, and belonging reinforce each other, all year.
References
- Layous, K., et al. (2012). Kindness Counts: Prompting Prosocial Behavior in Preadolescents Boosts Peer Acceptance and Well-Being. PLOS One, 7(12), e51380. plos.org
- MDPI Behavioral Sciences. (2025). Kindness in Children and Adolescents: Conceptualization and Interventions. Behav. Sci., 15(4), 213. mdpi.com
- Perkins, N., Smith, P., & Chadwick, P. (2022). Young Children's Conceptualisations of Kindness. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 909613. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Springer. (2025). The benefits of a school intervention for prosocial behaviour and psychological well-being. Current Psychology. springer.com
- Code of Alabama §16-6B-2(h); South Carolina Code §59-17-135; Iowa Code §256.18A.
- Taylor & Francis. (2026). A Scoping Review of Interventions Promoting Kindness in Primary Schools. The Journal of Genetic Psychology. tandfonline.com
Start the Kindness Feedback Loop
Be The Buffalo teaches kindness as a skill — helping, sharing, including, comforting, encouraging, forgiving — through weekly 15-minute lessons. Build the classroom culture where well-being and belonging reinforce each other.
Sign Up Free