This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. This week we're going to tell you the story of a woman who ran a psychological experiment on herself.

We look at the science of compassion and why being kind to others can make a big difference in your own life.

It's easy to say I can't make a difference but everyone can make a difference.

I want to tell you the story about a woman named Kelly Gillespie. She's in her early 40s, lives in London and a couple of years ago, she took a psychology class.

The class was online hosted by the education platform Coursera and it was taught by Scott Klaus. He's a psychologist at Wesleyan University.

And then my life changed after doing professor police's course and now I'm studying to be a psychotherapist and counselor.

Kelly learned several psychological concepts in the class. One is called the norm of reciprocity. If you're nice to someone or you open up to them, they are likely to do the same with you.

She also learned about the power of empathy. When you put yourself in someone else's shoes, it profoundly changes the relationship that you have with them.

Now lots of people learn about ideas and psychology but Kelly did something unusual. She took what she had learned in the class and she applied it in her own life.

As well I also like books and novels so I spend a lot of time at the British Library at King's Cours. My husband works just on the corner from there. So every Friday afternoon I would meet him out of work after I'd been at the British Library of the researching.

I would finish about four o'clock, he would finish about six o'clock. I'd take a couple of hours to spend. Sometimes I'd go to the welcome, sometimes I'd just sit and have a coffee and watch people walking by.

And always the same young guy. Always smiling despite not having anywhere to live or not having a job or any money. But he was always so pleasant and it started off simply giving him what's their change I had.

But it went on for a couple of months and I got to know him a little bit and know what would happen to make him leave home and come to London.

Kelly learned his name was Simon. She asked him if he would sit down with her for a cup of coffee.

He was just walking past on the other side of the road. I think he walked up and down to a court of the old day. And on a night he would get onto the night buses because he had nowhere to sleep.

He would just get on the night bus and travel down and down and down until six o'clock in the morning hoping to sleep, hoping to not get attacked by the junks and the people that use the night buses in London.

To make him feel comfortable I told him a little bit about my life. I told him I was waiting for a husband. I told him how long we'd been together and things like that.

And I think by sharing a little bit of my life made him more confident to talk about his life. And I found out he wasn't from far away from London just in Kent on the southeast coast.

So only an hour away from London way grew up.

And what's going through your head about what you can see or do that would be helpful.

He can get mentioning how much he missed his mum, how much he was so close to his mum. And that's a relationship that should never be damaged or taken apart.

So I think that led to me asking him, would he like to speak to his mum? Because my mum died ten years ago.

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