New UCLA Institute Spending Millions to Study Kindness

Aided by a $20 million donation, the University of California, Los Angeles is launching an institute to study kindness, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The money will provide seed funding for the university's Bedari Kindness Institute.

"In the midst of current world politics, violence and strife, the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute seeks to be an antidote," said Darnell Hunt, dean of the UCLA division of social sciences.

The institute will develop training tools to help practice kindness and share them through online programs and an app, the newspaper said.

"Cultivating kind thoughts increases the frequency of kind actions, and both the thoughts and the experience of engaging in the actions have positive effects on the well-being of the individual," Daniel Fessler, UCLA, the institute's inaugural director, said.

• Kindness Is Synonymous With Love
• Compassion Is Often the Best Medicine: Stanford Study