Abstract
In the spirit of the growing developments in positive psychology, there is an increasing interest in how kind people are to each other. Yet, this area lacks any strong psychometric instrument. An initial exploratory study demonstrated that a 40-item questionnaire, completed by 165 people, revealed distinct aspects of kindness when subjected to multivariate analysis. A subsequent study is reported, using the structure of the exploratory results to further clarify the conceptual framework (Study 1). The revised 45-item questionnaire was administered to 1039 individuals from the general British population. Smallest Space Analysis of the variables, supported by Factor analysis, confirmed the hypothesis of two facets to kindness, the psychological source of the action (from principles or empathy), and the form of expression (through psychological involvement or following social prescription. It also revealed an additional general, core kindness, labelled Anthropophilia. Reliable scales derived from the combinations of the two elements from each facet were identified: Affective-Socially Prescribed; Affective-Proactive; Principle-Socially Prescribed and Principle-Proactive. Intercorrelations between the scales revealed that they measure different modes of kindness. Comparisons between male and female respondents provided external validity for the questionnaire. Study 2 (N = 251) reported that the scales measure independent dimensions when correlated with similar and dissimilar concepts.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 5428-5440 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Current Psychology |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| Early online date | 26 May 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Keywords
- Kindness
- Kindness measure
- Latent structure
- Types of kindness
- Validity
- Well-being
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Psychology(all)