Think about the last time you ended an interaction feeling lighter than when it began. Really, try to picture at least one example before reading on.

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Did the moment involve making the other person’s life a little easier? Even in a small or indirect way, it could have been easing a worry, offering some clarity, or just prompting a smile. Helping others, even in modest forms, tends to feel good. We know this from experience, yet for some reason we often overlook this in others, or at least we don’t treat it as a fundamental part of human nature.

But if moments like these feel good for you, it would be odd to assume you’re a special case. And yet so many of us do. We know how good it feels to make others feel good, but assume that others don’t. Surveys show this disconnect clearly: people tend to see other people as selfish and themselves as altruistic, but those other people are thinking the same thing.

People Are Both

The fact is that people are both: we are self-interested and other-oriented. Both can coexist peacefully within the same person, and most of us have a solid mix of both. But the fact that we are self-interested doesn’t make our altruistic tendencies less genuine any more than the fact that we like to chill and watch Netflix means we don’t also like to take walks outside.

Think about a toddler who shows such glee when presenting someone a gift or helping with a task, and yet will also refuse to share a toy moments later. Both impulses exist. One more time: the presence of self-interest doesn’t erase the pull toward helping.

What the Evidence Shows

There is now a wealth of data pointing to the pleasure that comes from helping others. One major review (a meta-analysis, or study of studies) looked at findings from dozens of studies with people from different countries and ages and found that one reliable way to feel better was to do something kind for someone else.

Experiments point in the same direction. In one, people were given money and told to spend it either on themselves or on someone else. Those who spent it on others were happier by day’s end, regardless of how much they had been given. In another, people carried out kind acts aimed at themselves, at another person, or at the wider world. Only the groups focusing on others felt better at the end of the day.

Neuroscience backs this up as well. When people donate to charity, the parts of the brain linked to pleasure and reward become more active, even when the donation is involuntary. Other findings point in the same direction: people donating blood for disaster victims reported less pain during the procedure than when the same procedure was done for their own medical tests. And people who wrote a supportive note to a friend before a stressful task showed calmer physiological responses than those who didn’t.

Across different methods and populations, the conclusion is the same: humans tend to feel better when they help others. The moment you recalled at the start of this article reflects something fundamental about how we’re wired.

What About the World Then?

If this impulse is so deeply rooted, it’s natural to wonder why the world feels so selfish and uncaring. One shouldn’t conclude that this shows the impulse is weak or doesn’t exist, but rather that natural tendencies depend on context to show themselves. Curiosity and play are both natural drives, yet they are easily shaped or suppressed by immediate context and cultural norms. Prosocial behavior — our desire to help others — works the same way. If context and culture encourage our self-interest, our prosocial sides are simply thwarted.

Helping others feels good; humans are wired to find meaning and satisfaction in contribution. It is one of the most reliable findings across psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral research. And the fact that the world doesn’t always reflect it says more about our environments than about our nature.