The benefits of being nice extend to love. In 2003, scholars from the University of South Carolina looked at the impact of being nice on perceived male attractiveness. They recruited 194 female volunteers to participate in a mock dating game in which they had to pick between two men, Todd and Mike. The researchers varied Todd’s levels of handsomeness and “niceness” while keeping Mike’s personality and looks constant and neutral.

The results were clear and conclusive. When their looks were equivalent, “Nice Todd” outperformed Neutral Mike. “Jerk Todd” lost 85% of the time to Mike even when Todd was better looking. In my view, the fact that niceness beats physical beauty is evidence of the existence of God.

But probably the greatest benefit of being nice accrues to one’s own happiness. In 2010, two British researchers looked at the effects of engaging in small daily acts of kindness. Their results, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, show clear causal evidence that kind acts, systematically deployed, raised the participants’ self-judged happiness.