Kindness is the sincere and voluntary use of one’s time, talent, and resources to better the lives of others, one’s own life, and the world through genuine acts of love, compassion, generosity, and service.

While niceness implies a level of pleasurable or agreeable behavior toward someone else, kindness takes niceness a step further. Kindness can be defined as a genuine and sincere way of giving your time and intention to someone else through compassion, time, generosity, and care for the betterment of helping others (Binet & Passmore, 2019).

As one study explains it, the term encompasses any act aimed at benefiting another person, including both everyday acts of kindness (such as helping that neighbor just for the sake of it), as well as efforts to improve the world on a larger scale, such as volunteering regularly.

“Acts of kindness” refer to benevolent and helpful actions intentionally directed towards another person, motivated by the desire to help another and not to gain reward or to avoid punishment 2.

Random acts of kindness refer to spontaneous acts of generosity or compassion towards others, often performed without any expectation of reward or recognition.