Those "Practice random acts of kindness" bumper stickers may be preaching more wisdom than we realized. 
 
 While performing small, kind gestures every day helps others, a new study by Yale and UCLA researchers suggests it may also diffuse our own stress, improving our mental health. 
 
 "The take-home message is that when we are stressed and we help others, we can also end up helping ourselves," study author Emily Ansell, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, told CBS News. 
 
 Lab-based studies have shown that giving to others can help people cope with stress and boost their positive emotions, said Ansell, but she and colleagues wanted to investigate whether the same holds true in the real world. They asked 77 adults, ranging in age from 18 to 44, to use a study-provided smartphone to report their daily feelings and experiences over a two-week period. 
 
 Every night, the participants received an automated phone reminder that prompted them to complete a daily assessment: to report any stressful life events they experienced that day at work or school or in their personal lives at home, including any financial problems or health issues. The total number of events was the measure of their daily stress level, said Ansell. 
 
 They were also asked to report whether they had engaged in various helpful behaviors, simple acts such as opening a door for someone else, helping a child with schoolwork, loaning money or an item of value to someone else (clothes, a car, or a tool, for example), or asking another person if they needed help that day. 
 
 The participants also completed a daily survey that measured their emotion, and they were asked to rate their mental health each day, rating it from 0 for poor to 100 for excellent. 
 
 Helping behaviors seemed to buffer the negative effects of stress on a person's well-being, the authors found. Those who reported performing more acts of kindness showed no dips in positive emotion or mental health. And they had lower increases in negative emotion in response to high daily stress. 
 
 "People overall did one or two acts of kindness per day, but what was most important was when they did more than one or two per day, we saw a benefit to their well-being," Ansell said. 
 
 People who reported lower-than-usual helping behaviors also reported lower positive emotion and higher negative emotion in response to high daily stress. 
 
 It was surprising how strong and uniform the effects were across daily experiences, said Ansell, whose research is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. 
 
 Ansell plans additional research involving more ethnically and culturally diverse populations. 
 
 Another avenue for future study, she said, is to determine whether actively encouraging people to engage in more acts of kindness and helpfulness can improve mood and mental health. 
 
 "It may be particularly relevant for people dealing with a lot of stress who are at risk for depression relapse," she said. 
 
 Ansell said the findings are especially appropriate for this time of year, the season of giving. 
 
 "A lot of the time, we find that our daily stress goes up over the holiday season. We have a lot going on. There can be a lot of different social gatherings and things like that. So when you're out and about having a stressful day, think about doing one of these helpful things: help someone out at the store, hold a door or elevator," said Ansell. "It might help you feel a little better in terms of your own mood or stress this holiday season." ||||| Credit: George Hodan/public domain Providing help to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers can mitigate the impact of daily stressors on our emotions and our mental health, according to new research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. 
 
 "Our research shows that when we help others we can also help ourselves," explains study author Emily Ansell of the Yale University School of Medicine. "Stressful days usually lead us to have a worse mood and poorer mental health, but our findings suggest that if we do small things for others, such as holding a door open for someone, we won't feel as poorly on stressful days." 
 
 We often turn to others for social support when we're feeling stressed, but these new results suggest that proactively doing things for others may be another effective strategy for coping with everyday worries and strains. 
 
 "The holiday season can be a very stressful time, so think about giving directions, asking someone if they need help, or holding that elevator door over the next month," Ansell adds. "It may end up helping you feel just a little bit better." 
 
 Laboratory-based experiments have shown that providing support can help individuals cope with stress, increasing their experiences of positive emotion. To investigate whether this holds true in the context of everyday functioning in the real world, Ansell and co-authors Elizabeth B. Raposa (UCLA and Yale University School of Medicine) and Holly B. Laws (Yale University School of Medicine) conducted a study in which people used their smartphones to report on their feelings and experiences in daily life. 
 
 A total of 77 adults, ranging from 18 to 44 years old, participated in the 14-day study; people with substance dependences, diagnosed mental illness, or cognitive impairment were not included for participation. 
 
 The participants received an automated phone reminder every night that prompted them to complete their daily assessment. They were asked to report any stressful life events they experienced that day across several domains (e.g., interpersonal, work/education, home, finance, health/accident) and the total number of events comprised the measure of daily stress. They were also asked to report whether they had engaged in various helpful behaviors (e.g., held open a door, helped with schoolwork, asked someone if they needed help) that day. 
 
 The participants also completed a 10-item short-form of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, a well-validated measure of experienced emotion, and they were asked to rate their mental health for that day using a slider on a scale that ranged from 0 (poor) to 100 (excellent). 
 
 The results indicated that helping others boosted participants' daily well-being. A greater number of helping behaviors was associated with higher levels of daily positive emotion and better overall mental health. 
 
 And participants' helping behavior also influenced how they responded to stress. People who reported lower-than-usual helping behavior reported lower positive emotion and higher negative emotion in response to high daily stress. Those who reported higher-than-usual levels of helping behavior, on the other hand, showed no dampening of positive emotion or mental health, and a lower increase in negative emotion, in response to high daily stress. In other words, helping behavior seemed to buffer the negative effects of stress on well-being. 
 
 "It was surprising how strong and uniform the effects were across daily experiences," says Ansell. "For example, if a participant did engage in more prosocial behaviors on stressful days there was essentially no impact of stress on positive emotion or daily mental health. And there was only a slight increase in negative emotion from stress if the participant engaged in more prosocial behaviors." 
 
 The researchers note that additional studies will be necessary to determine whether the findings hold across ethnically and culturally diverse populations. 
 
 A particularly important avenue for future investigation, the researchers say, is to determine whether actively prompting people to engage in more helping behavior can further improve their mood and mental health. 
 
 "This would help clarify whether prescribing prosocial behaviors can be used as a potential intervention to deal with stress, particularly in individuals who are experiencing depressed mood or high acute stress," Ansell concludes. 
 
 Explore further: Experiencing major stress makes some older adults better able to handle daily stress 
 
 More information: E. B. Raposa et al. Prosocial Behavior Mitigates the Negative Effects of Stress in Everyday Life, Clinical Psychological Science (2015). DOI: 10.1177/2167702615611073 ||||| Irvine, Calif., Sept. 13, 2016 – Regularly snapping selfies with your smartphone and sharing photos with your friends can help make you a happier person, according to computer scientists at the University of California, Irvine. In a first-of-its-kind study published just before back-to-school season, the authors found that students can combat the blues with some simple, deliberate actions on their mobile devices. 
 
 By conducting exercises via smartphone photo technology and gauging users’ psychological and emotional states, the researchers found that the daily taking and sharing of certain types of images can positively affect people. The results of the study out of UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences were published recently in the Psychology of Well-Being. 
 
 “Our research showed that practicing exercises that can promote happiness via smartphone picture taking and sharing can lead to increased positive feelings for those who engage in it,” said lead author Yu Chen, a postdoctoral scholar in UCI’s Department of Informatics. “This is particularly useful information for returning college students to be aware of, since they face many sources of pressure.” 
 
 These stressors – financial difficulties, being away from home for the first time, feelings of loneliness and isolation, and the rigors of coursework – can negatively impact students’ academic performance and lead to depression. 
 
 “The good news is that despite their susceptibility to strain, most college students constantly carry around a mobile device, which can be used for stress relief,” Chen said. “Added to that are many applications and social media tools that make it easy to produce and send images.” 
 
 The goal of the study, she said, was to help researchers understand the effects of photo taking on well-being in three areas: self-perception, in which people manipulated positive facial expressions; self-efficacy, in which they did things to make themselves happy; and pro-social, in which people did things to make others happy. 
 
 Chen and her colleagues designed and conducted a four-week study involving 41 college students. The subjects – 28 female and 13 male – were instructed to continue their normal day-to-day activities (going to class, doing schoolwork, meeting with friends, etc.) while taking part in the research. 
 
 But first each was invited to the informatics lab for an informal interview and to fill out a general questionnaire and consent form. The scientists helped students load a survey app onto their phones to document their moods during the first “control” week of the study. Participants used a different app to take photos and record their emotional states over the following three-week “intervention” phase. 
 
 Subjects reported their moods three times a day using the smartphone apps. In evening surveys, they were asked to provide details of any significant events that may have affected their emotions during the course of the day. 
 
 The project involved three types of photos to help the researchers determine how smiling, reflecting and giving to others might impact users’ moods. The first was a selfie, to be taken daily while smiling. The second was an image of something that made the photo taker happy. The third was a picture of something the photographer believed would bring happiness to another person (which was then sent to that person). Participants were randomly assigned to take photos of one type. 
 
 Researchers collected nearly 2,900 mood measurements during the study and found that subjects in all three groups experienced increased positive moods. Some participants in the selfie group reported becoming more confident and comfortable with their smiling photos over time. The students taking photos of objects that made them happy became more reflective and appreciative. And those who took photos to make others happy became calmer and said that the connection to their friends and family helped relieve stress. 
 
 “You see a lot of reports in the media about the negative impacts of technology use, and we look very carefully at these issues here at UCI,” said senior author Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics. “But there have been expanded efforts over the past decade to study what’s become known as �?positive computing,’ and I think this study shows that sometimes our gadgets can offer benefits to users.” 
 
 About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu. 
 
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– It turns out getting in the holiday spirit can be good for your mental health. A study published last week in Clinical Psychological Science found performing small acts of kindness for others can give us an improved outlook on things and help us to better deal with stress. "Stressful days usually lead us to have a worse mood and poorer mental health, but our findings suggest that if we do small things for others, such as holding a door open for someone, we won't feel as poorly on stressful days," researcher Emily Ansell says in an Association for Psychological Science press release. The findings suggest "prosocial behavior" might someday be a useful course of treatment for people suffering from chronic stress or depression. Previous lab-based studies have shown similar results, but Ansell and her team wanted to see if they held true in the real world, CBS News reports. According to the press release, researchers had 77 adults use their smartphones to report stressful events, acts of kindness, and their emotional state every day for two weeks. CBS reports participants averaged one or two helpful acts per day. But those who logged more than that had improved well-being and were less affected by stress. "The holiday season can be a very stressful time, so think about giving directions, asking someone if they need help, or holding that elevator door over the next month," Ansell says in the press release. "It may end up helping you feel just a little bit better." (A cafe's act of kindness for grieving parents went viral.)