{"id":611,"date":"2018-11-12T10:10:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-12T10:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/?p=611"},"modified":"2020-05-28T12:42:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T12:42:50","slug":"exploring-kindness-as-a-jra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/psychology\/2018\/11\/12\/exploring-kindness-as-a-jra\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Kindness as a JRA"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alessia Goglio<\/p>\n

Being a Psychology undergraduate here at Sussex enabled me to explore different domains of interest in this fascinating subject and to develop my passion for \u201cPositive Psychology\u201d, the field that studies what is good in life.  Among the topic explored in this field, there is kindness: a construct that had been shown to not only improve life satisfaction and well-being but also friendships and relationships.<\/p>\n

Kindness is a topic of growing interest in our university and one of the five core values of the Sussex 2025 Strategic Framework<\/em><\/a>. Therefore, when I was given the amazing opportunity to work as a Junior Research Associate during summer 2018, I decided, with the help of my supervisor Professor Robin Banerjee<\/a> and my mentor Jessica Cotney<\/a>, to conduct a mixed-methods research investigating this positive construct.<\/p>\n

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Background <\/strong><\/h4>\n

Research has investigated the main characteristics of kindness and its positive effect in people\u2019s lives, but no previous study has attempted to predict intention to perform kind acts or explored its facilitating and hindering factors. Thus, in my research we tried (1) to apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour model (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991) to the performance of kind acts, and (2) to investigate what factors affect kindness in the context of university life.<\/p>\n

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The Theory of Planned Behaviour model<\/em><\/strong> state that attitudes (one\u2019s personal beliefs and evaluations); subjective norms (individuals\u2019 beliefs of how their significant others think they should behave) and perceived behavioural control (how much control the individual believes to have over the specific behaviour) are the main predicting factors of intentions to perform a wide range of behaviours (e.g. health protecting behaviours, healthy habits and prosocial behaviours).<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Main questions <\/strong><\/h4>\n