New research measures kindness by what people are willing to give up, and older adults keep showing up when helping gets harder. We tend to think of kindness as a personality trait you either have or do not. Some people are warm and generous, others less so. But scientists who study it are finding that kindness is more measurable, and more consistent, than we might assume.
And one finding stands out for anyone over 55: when helping becomes difficult, older adults are more likely to keep going.
How Do You Measure Kindness?
Oliver Scott Curry, chief science officer at Kindlab, the research arm of Kindness.org, and a research affiliate of the School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford, has spent more than 20 years studying cooperation and morality. In a study published in April 2026 in the Social Psychological Bulletin, he and his colleagues tested a simple idea: kindness can be measured by how much of a personal cost someone is willing to accept to benefit another person.
Across two studies with more than 15,000 participants, people made choices about sharing money and performing kind acts for family, friends, colleagues, strangers and neighbors. Their decisions were about 92 percent consistent with an underlying “welfare trade-off ratio” in the first study and about 89 percent consistent in the second. In other words, people’s kindness followed a stable internal rule about how much they value others compared with themselves.
The researchers also found that this ratio tended to decrease with social distance: people were willing to give up more for those closer to them.
Why Age Changes the Picture
A separate line of research looked at effort rather than money. In a study published in Psychological Science in 2021, a team led by Patricia Lockwood compared 95 adults aged 18 to 36 with 92 adults aged 55 to 85. Participants made 150 choices about squeezing a handheld grip at different effort levels to earn rewards, either for themselves or for someone else. Grip strength was measured first, so the task was fair for everyone.
When the effort was low, both groups were equally willing to help. But when the task became harder, older adults were more willing to work for someone else, while younger adults were more likely to put in high effort for their own gain. “Older adults seem to be more willing to put in effort to help others,” Lockwood said.
The study had limits. It measured effort in a lab task rather than real-life helping, and it did not include middle-aged adults. Still, because it controlled for physical strength, it suggests the difference was about motivation, not ability.
Why Kindness May Grow With Age
Researchers have several explanations. With age, people often place more value on relationships and meaning than on competition and status. Life experience may also make it easier to understand what others need, and to see that helping is worth the effort.
How to Practice Kindness at Any Age
You do not need grand gestures. Start with small, regular acts: check on a neighbor, offer your time to a friend who is struggling, or volunteer for a local cause. Notice when helping feels inconvenient, and do it anyway, since that is exactly where research suggests kindness matters most. Kindness also tends to strengthen social ties, which is good for well-being.
Psychologists say kindness gets stronger with age, and adults over 55 prove it when it counts: they help more when it is hard.
