Holding the door

In 2011, two researchers at Penn State University, Joseph Santamaria and David Rosenbaum, filmed people entering a university building. Their finding, published in Psychological Science: people hold the door longer when two people follow rather than one, and those following speed up so as not to keep anyone waiting. In their view, courtesy is not just a learned rule: it is a way of sharing effort, so that no one carries the weight of the door alone.

In Vancouver, psychologist Gillian Sandstrom and her colleagues gave a gift card to 60 people outside a coffee shop. Half were asked to order efficiently; the other half to look the barista in the eye, smile and exchange a few words. The latter came out in a better mood, with a stronger sense of belonging. A few words with a near-stranger are enough to connect us.

In 2022, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General a series of experiments conducted partly in a Chicago park. Passers-by offered a hot chocolate to a stranger, then estimated the effect of their gesture. The result was consistent: we underestimate the joy of the person who receives. And in a lab game, people who had benefited from a kind gesture were then more generous toward others. Kindness spreads.

None of this is new to Ubuntu, which holds that we become persons through other persons. Science simply confirms what grandmothers knew: the "we" is also built in the seconds we give.