In virus chaos, some find solace, purpose in helping others

NEW YORK (AP) — In April, as the coronavirus was ravaging New York, Susan Jones learned her older brother had been diagnosed with a blood cancer.

His supervisor at work launched a GoFundMe page to help with costs, and Jones shared it on Facebook. What happened next stunned her.

While Jones, who works as principal ballet mistress at American Ballet Theatre, was confident her closest friends would help, she was stunned to see scores of colleagues — some she didn't even know that well, and didn’t even know she had a brother — donating, despite their own economic challenges in a struggling dance community.

Jones found herself asking: Would the response have been the same just two months earlier, before the pandemic? She's fairly certain it wouldn't. Instead, she thinks the instinct to help shows, along with simple kindness, how people are striving to make a difference. At a time of helplessness, she says, helping others makes a mark on a world that seems to be overwhelming all of us.

“People everywhere are trying to keep control of their lives, grasping at anything to preserve who they are," Jones says.

That helping others can feel good is not just an anecdotal truth but an idea backed by research, says Laurie Santos, psychology professor at Yale University and teacher of the school's most popular course to date: “Psychology and the Good Life."

“The intuition that helping others is the key to our well-being right now fits with science,” Santos says. “There’s lots of research showing that spending our time and money on other people can often make us happier than spending that same time or money on ourselves."

“Taking time to do something nice for someone else,” she says, "is a powerful strategy for improving our well-being.”

One recent day,...