Understanding university students’ conceptualizations and perceptions of kindness: A mixed methods study

ABSTRACT

Attending university can present a host of challenges for undergraduate students and the mental health of students has increasingly become a concern as students struggle to meet the demands of new academic and social expectations. Despite several studies assessing the effects of being kind on well-being, there remains a dearth of research identifying how students understand and enact kindness. The aims of this study were to integrate a kindness assignment into undergraduate coursework, to explore how students define and enact kindness, and to examine how being kind impacted students’ perceptions of themselves, their peers, and their campus. Students were asked to complete a series of five kind acts and administered a series of pre- and post-assignment measures and open-ended prompts. Consistent with our hypotheses, participants who completed at least 3 of the 5 planned acts of kindness reported significantly higher scores on measures of in-person kindness (d = 0.46, p = .04) and peer connectedness (d = 0.46, p = .04). Participants did not, however, report significantly higher scores on measures of self-perceived online kindness (d = 0.12, p = .59) or on their perception of the kindness of their campus community (d = 0.09, p = .68). Participants in this study planned a total of 492 acts, which were coded using content analysis. The salient themes in kind acts were Helping Others, Giving, Demonstrating Appreciation, and Communicating. This study demonstrated that a curriculum-based kindness intervention was well received by students and resulted in students performing varied acts of kindness that positively impacted their self-ratings of kindness and peer connectedness.

KEYWORDS:

• Kindness
• post-secondary instruction
• well-being
• mixed methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant (F19-03564) awarded to Drs. Binfet and Willis–Stewart.

Notes on contributors

John-Tyler Binfet

John-Tyler Binfet is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Binfet is the lead author of the School Kindness Scale (Binfet, Gadermann, and Schonert-Reichl 2016) and his research examines school-situated kindness.

Sally Willis-Stewart

Sally Willis-Stewart is senior instructor in the School of Health and Exercise Sciences at the University of British Columbia.

Adam Lauze

Adam Lauze is a preservice teacher education student in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.

Freya L. L. Green

Freya L. L. Green is a masters student in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.

Zakary A. Draper

Zakary A. Draper is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Brittany Calibaba

Brittany Calibaba is a medical student in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.