Sudhakar Jha
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Written By: Sudhakar Jha | Published : September 1, 2018 3:22 PM IST
Study finds that supporting people who you know and are in need reduces anxiety and stress. © Shuterstock
Generosity comes in naturally to Indians. Don't believe us? Well, here is the data to prove. According to a survey by Charities Aid Foundation, India has the highest number of generous people in the world, with 40 million Indians helping a stranger, 265 million donating money for charity and 256 million taking time out to volunteer for social causes.
And all this generosity does make us feel good. So, what's the theory behind it? A team of scientists studied two different forms of charity, one where people gave money to those who were close to them (targeted support) and other where people gave money for charity (untargeted support).
Published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the story authors, Tristen K. Inagaki, Ph.D., and Lauren P. Ross, both from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, performed two experiments to note the difference between the two and how it affected the brain.
In the first experiment, 45 participants were given a task and informed that they could win a monetary reward either for someone close to them, for a charity, or for themselves.
After all forms of support-giving, the researchers performed a functional MRI (fMRI) of the individuals who performed the emotional faces task, where they rated emotions on people's facial expressions.
In the scans, both the forms of support activated brain's ventral striatum, which is linked to selflessness, and the septal area. Also, and more importantly, support to the targeted group showed diminished brain activity in the amygdala, the brain structure which processes emotions. Increased activation of amygdala, on the other hand, means in anxiety, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
For the next experiment, 382 study participants self-reported on their prosocial, support-giving behaviours. Like the first experiment, the scientists let the participants to perform a rating task inside the fMRI scanner of different emotions. And it was again noted that people who were supporting the target group displayed reduced brain activity in the amygdala.
The results suggest that supporting people who you know and are in need provides with reduced anxiety and stress. The authors concluded that humans benefitted more when they acted in the service of others' well-being.
