Welcome to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This week we're going to tell you the story of a woman who ran an interesting psychological

experiment on herself.

We look at the science of compassion and why being kind to others can make a big difference

to your own life.

It's easy to say, yeah, 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.

Using 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

Plouse.

He's a psychologist at Wesleyan University.

And then my life changed after doing professor's thesis course.

And now I'm studying to be a psychiatrist and a piston 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're 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.

...