This Online Group Shares Positive Pics, And Here Are 50 To Make You Smile (New Pics)

"Kindness in humans is very interesting from an evolutionary perspective. At first glance, kindness doesn’t seem to make much evolutionary sense—nature doesn’t usually select for properties that help others at a cost to oneself. But in humans, things are a bit different," Dr. Geher explained to Bored Panda in an email.

"We evolved to live in stable social groups and at some point, cooperation became a core element of the human experience. With that, people who developed reputations as kind (as opposed to as selfish or greedy) actually did quite well," he said.

"Being seen as kind makes one more attractive as a friend, collaborator, and romantic partner. And this fact has shaped our psychology such that we tend to value kindness in others quite a bit."

Dr. Geher also shed some light on finding goodness and joy even when everything feels very tense and chaotic. "How people respond to stressful situations is a major factor in who someone is at their core. Stressful situations often bring out the worst in people, leading to anxiety, depression, and sometimes anger—things that characterize the worst of the human emotional experience," he told Bored Panda.

"Finding joy and goodness during stressful times is not always easy. But there are some kinds of experiences that famously help people to de-stress. Getting out into nature has been found to have positive effects when it comes to reducing stress. Sharing one’s emotional experiences with close others often is helpful as well," he said.

"Another one I’ll put out there pertains to creativity—it is hard to be stressed while painting a watercolor of a beautiful natural landscape, for instance."

Dr. Geher noted that stress is "essentially the bane of our psychological existence."

"And let's face it: These days, there is plenty to be stressed about. Finding healthy ways that reduce stress for you is key to living a happy and fulfilling life. It may be exercise, nature, meditation, art, reading, crochet, etc. But once you find what works for you, make sure to institutionalize that into your daily life—doing so will be helpful when inevitable stressors come your way."

Human beings are hardwired in such a way that they focus more on the negative aspects of life more than the positives. This might be useful for survival, but it also means that you tend to have a slightly warped perspective of how the world can be.

Living through extremely distressing events like pandemics and armed conflicts and spending far too much time on social media, following every single negative development, can lead to empathy burnout, exhaustion, and chronic anxiety.

Of course, real life isn’t black and white. It’s nuanced. There’s joy and sorrow, triumph and horror, beauty and destruction, altruism and greed. And so, it’s important to recognize that no matter how horrible or wonderful life seems at the moment, the human experience is much deeper and more varied than it might appear. It would be a tad naive and short-sighted to believe that absolutely everything is amazing/horrible.

Though this means that there’s always potential conflict waiting behind every moment of joy, there are also silver linings to look for during stressful and tense times. It’s up to us to remember to focus on the positives when we’re drowning in stress.

People tend to pay more attention to bad things and overlook the positives due to evolution, Verywell Mind explains.

It’s likely that in early human history, paying attention to “bad, dangerous, and negative threats” was of utmost importance for survival. To put it simply, it’s theorized that people who were “more attuned to danger” and paid more attention to the bad things surrounding them were more likely to survive and, therefore, pass on their genes.

Negativity bias, also known as positive-negative asymmetry, is something that we’ve all felt in our lives. For example, it’s why you might feel much worse when you get criticized for messing up than when you get praised for doing a good job.

Or why an irritating comment from someone you know can ruin an otherwise perfectly fine day. In short, the average person is more biased toward negativity simply because of how our psychology and biology evolved to keep us safe(r).

Furthermore, human beings are more likely to remember traumatic experiences, react more strongly to negative stimuli, and respond more strongly to negative rather than equally positive events.

On top of that, people tend to learn more from negative outcomes and experiences than from positive ones. Negativity bias is also why the average person is more motivated to avoid losing something than to gain something.

“It is the ‘bad things’ that grab our attention, stick to our memories, and, in many cases, influence the decisions that we make,” Verywell Mind explains.

For example, this is why people tend to see bad news as being more ‘truthful.’ It’s also why negative news stories get more attention.