Generosity was defined as "the virtue of giving good things to one's spouse freely and abundantly" -- like simply making them coffee in the morning -- and researchers quizzed men and women on how often they behaved generously toward their partners.
Socha doesn't realise he has much compassion until it jumps out and startles him; when he finds himself behaving generously to his charges, he's embarrassed: "I don't want them to think I'm a sucker who's doing this for nothing".
Consistent with this finding, research on reciprocal altruism and the evolution of cooperation demonstrates that people ultimately benefit from behaving generously and cooperatively toward individuals with whom they are likely to interact in the future [8] [10].
Perhaps, though, it's just another example of the Heaney effect, for isn't there something about the late Nobel laureate that makes us all want to behave more generously, to try on his nobility for size?
We hypothesized that T would cause men to behave less generously towards strangers.
Perhaps no event in our history was ever more contingent than Appomattox: it was not, Winik says, "preordained". Lee could have opted for anarchy; Grant could have behaved less generously.
Gone to Ground is in many ways a heartening book, about how ordinary German men and women could and did behave imaginatively and generously, often at great danger to themselves.
I had seen him behave kindly and generously when we volunteered together with refugees.
We can make a lot of trouble, but also we behave reasonably if rewarded generously enough".
