This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
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 forties, 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 Plows.
He's a psychologist at Wesleyan University.
And then my life changed after doing professor Plus's course, and now I'm studying to be a psychotherapist and counselor.
Kelly learns 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 in 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 write books and novels, so I spend a lot of time at the british library at King's coast.
My husband works just around the corner of them there.
So every Friday afternoon I would meet him out of work after I've been at the british library researching.