Why Kindness Is Invincible
The Other Way to Win
“Kindness is invincible1,” seems like a nonsensical oxymoron. One thinks of viking raiders slaughtering the “kind,” monks of England and stealing their golden relics. How’s that kindness working out for you, monk?
We think being hard, disciplined, and combative leads to victory, but kindness? We associate that with yielding, softness, and giving way to more forceful and determined personalities who’ll seize what they want. Kindness is for victims, for sheep.
Except it’s not. Kindness is a weapon of softness that disarms opponents and allows us to seize victory through unguarded back doors.
“I believe that in the end it is kindness and generous accommodation that are the catalysts for real change.” — Nelson Mandela, “The Elders” meeting, July 18, 2007
Fortify Yourself With Kindness
Victory is subjective. If you feel good about an outcome, can you possibly have lost? Acts of kindness alter our internal tally of events, regardless of factual scorekeeping.
Spending money on someone else leaves you poorer but happier than if you’d spent it on yourself2. Workplace kindness leaves both the giver and receiver happier, but givers are less depressed and more satisfied with their work and personal lives3.
Kindness has meaningful downstream consequences. It buffers against burnout and emotional exhaustion4. Among school children, being kind recruits new friends5, which is likely true for adults as well.
Warped Kindness Expectations
Kindness is seen as a wishy-washy nice-to-have instead of a viable conflict strategy in part because we don’t realize how it changes perceptions. Receivers have a much stronger positive reaction to kindness than givers imagine6:
Going On the Offensive by Asking for Kindness
To defeat an enemy, it’s better to co-opt than attack.
Ben Franklin realized this 250 years ago. In his autobiography, he drew upon the old wisdom that, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged."
Faced with a Pennsylvanian politician who hated him and worked against his goals in the legislature, Franklin took a surprising approach:
“Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.”
Researchers have verified “The Franklin Effect,” is real. When participants personally asked for a favor, subjects liked them more7.
When sellers paired an offer with asking for a favor, subjects were more likely to accept the offer8.
Kindness in the Face of Aggression:
Kindness is not the domain of the weak and naive. In fact, cruelty, rudeness, and aggression are often the tools of the weak and insecure people, for whom they are flashy compensations. So how does a strong person respond to aggression?
We can do worse than the advice Emperor Marcus Aurelius gave himself:
“What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight—if you get the chance—correcting him cheerfully at the exact moment that he’s trying to do you harm. “No, no, my friend. That isn’t what we’re here for. It isn’t me who’s harmed by that. It’s you. And show him, gently and without pointing fingers, that it’s so. That bees don’t behave like this—or any other animals with a sense of community. Don’t do it sardonically or meanly, but affectionately—with no hatred in your heart. And not ex-cathedra or to impress third parties, but speaking directly. Even if there are other people around9.”
The Limits To Kindness:
Kindness doesn’t imply a refusal to defend oneself from existential threats. Marcus tried to negotiate peace with the Germans pouring over the borders of the Roman Empire and even gave them land to settle on. But when they couldn’t be sated and continued to attack, he went to war and brought them to heel.
Refusing to respond to aggression worked for the followers of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi, but their approach depended on a specific set of circumstances. They leaned on the existence of a free press that would report abuse to sympathetic English and American audiences, and unbiased news coverage and sympathetic audiences are absent from many situations.
It’s unlikely that Jews could have responded to their Nazi exterminators with kindness and gotten a better outcome, for instance.
This is where well-rounded virtue comes into play. We need wisdom as well as courage, moderation, and justice to know when and how to utilize kindness and force.
But kindness is probably the underutilized answer to most situations, and aggression the overutilized one.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations 11.18.5.9a
Dunn, E. W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688
Chancellor, J., Margolis, S., Jacobs Bao, K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2018). Everyday prosociality in the workplace: The reinforcing benefits of giving, getting, and glimpsing. Emotion,18(4), 507-517.
Grant, A. M., & Sonnentag, S. (2010). Doing good buffers against feeling bad: Prosocial impact compensates for negative task and self-evaluations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 111, 13-22.
Layous K, Nelson SK, Oberle E, Schonert-Reichl KA, Lyubomirsky S (2012) Kindness Counts: Prompting Prosocial Behavior in Preadolescents Boosts Peer Acceptance and Well-Being. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51380.
Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2023). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(1), 236–252.
Jecker, Jon; Landy, David (August 1, 1969). "Liking a Person as a Function of Doing Him a Favour". Human Relations. 22 (4): 371–378.
Blanchard, Kurt. The Favor Request Effect: Requesting a Favor from Consumers to Seal the Deal Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 42, Issue 6, April 2016, Pages 985–1001,
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations 11.18.5.9a