In addition to being a physician, I am also a scientist, someone who likes to understand why things work and loves doing experiments to ask (and answer) these questions.

In this session, I am going to focus on Envision Kindness’s own research — which is focused on defining how images of kindness affect people.

Short answer? These images inspire much larger increases in joy, hope, gratitude and compassion than even pretty pictures, typical go-to images like puppies in a basket or a beautiful landscape.

My aim? To convince readers to rebalance their visual diet and include kindness pics on their visual plate. Your sense of joy and connection could change markedly.

I’ve been doing experiments for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid (maybe 9 years old), I was taking clocks apart to see how they worked (my parents were less than thrilled when I couldn’t put them back together).

Doing experiments allows for discovery — the pursuit of the truth. Because if we understand the truth, we can better make sense of, and benefit, our world.

After Jesse (my son) and I set out on the road to build Envision Kindness, Jesse was a strong proponent of actually measuring the response to images of kindness. We already knew that after looking at pictures of kindness we (and other people) felt good — a warm, relaxed and uplifted feeling.

We also knew that other scientists — some described in an earlier blog — had shown that a few minutes of a video about kindness caused some significant changes in people. So we decided to measure the response not to a single video, but to several still photographs of acts of kindness and compare them to other types of images.

The images we studied included “negative” images — those of violence, destruction and neglect; “neutral” images — hammers, towels or doorknobs, and “positive” or pretty images — puppies in a basket, bunnies, flowers, etc. These three types of images were from a standard set that psychologists have used for years.

The last group was images of kindness. Examples of these included: a woman in distress on a dark stairwell being comforted by a police officer; a young man with a shaven head looking up from a sea of shaven heads. This young man was going for chemotherapy, and his friends shaved their heads in support.

Before they saw any of the images, every one of the 400 participants completed questionnaires on how they were feeling. All were feeling pretty happy at baseline. Then each was assigned to look at images in one of the groups — so 100 people saw negative images, 100 neutral, etc. After seeing one type of image, they again completed the questionnaires on how they felt.

The negative images did exactly what they had been shown to do before. People reported marked increases in sadness, fear and anxiety and decreases in joy, optimism, gratitude, etc. It was really impressive how the negative images quickly and dramatically affected people.

The “neutral” images didn’t do much of anything, which made sense. The “positive” or pretty images did make people feel more happy, more optimistic or more grateful as well as boosting feelings of love or trust.

What was really interesting was that the 100 people who saw the images of kindness had about double the increase in joy (happiness), optimism and gratitude that the 100 people who saw the positive images. Double the effect on self-reported love and trust as well as a bunch of other emotions and states that were measured.

I have looked at a lot of data in my work career. These results impressed me. Although not yet published in peer-reviewed literature, there was something important in here, even more than what we originally thought.

Why would people respond to these kindness images more than pretty pictures? The images weren’t pretty — each had a problem or challenge to meet and someone trying to help without necessarily being able to fix the problem.

Maybe because these images touched on real life that people could relate to: they had emotion associated with them rather than just being cute or beautiful. Or maybe it is because at birth we are already “programmed” or “equipped” to recognize these scenes and respond to them. Or some combination. I welcome suggestions.

Altogether, the results suggest that images like these can help people a lot. As part of our work, we are using the images from our large portfolio and combining them into unique presentations to amplify the responses further.

Our goal: to inspire people as much as we can by stirring the inborn quality of kindness and compassion. This allows for connection to one another (and ourselves) through our shared humanity. When people feel connected to others, joy, love, optimism and compassion flow much more naturally. Connection, collaboration, and cooperation are all strengthened.

Just think of the possibilities.

David Fryburg of East Lyme is a physician and scientist and the co-founder of Envision Kindness, a nonprofit that promotes kindness, compassion, joy, and love through images. For information, visit envisionkindness.org.