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50 free Kindness trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
41 free kindness trivia questions with answers. This kindness trivia quiz is built for World Kindness Day assemblies, Random Acts of Kindness Week, staff meetings and anyone who wants a feel-good round that still makes people think. The questions cover the days and movements (World Kindness Day, Random Acts of Kindness Day, GivingTuesday, the Kindness Rocks Project), the ideas behind them (the Golden Rule in Confucius, Hillel and the Sermon on the Mount, ubuntu, ahimsa, chesed, metta, Aristotle's charis), the science (the warm glow, oxytocin, why volunteers report less depression, and what Yale learned from babies), and the stories, from the Good Samaritan and pay-it-forward to Wonder and the Choose Kind movement. There are questions on kind people too: Mother Teresa's Nobel, Mister Rogers' Senate testimony, Andrew Carnegie's libraries, the Red Cross and the Nobel Peace Prize, and Jacinda Ardern's kindness-first leadership. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's pages on kindness, altruism and the movements and people involved, and each explanation adds one detail worth passing on.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01World Kindness Day is observed on which date?
13 November
It was introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement, a coalition of national kindness NGOs.
Q 02In which year did the World Kindness Movement introduce World Kindness Day?
1998
Australia put the day on the school calendar for more than 9,000 schools in 2012, and Singapore first observed it in 2009.
Q 03In the United States, Random Acts of Kindness Day falls on which date?
17 February
New Zealand, where the day began in 2004, celebrates it on 1 September; suggested acts include paying for the next car at the drive-thru.
Q 04The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, founded in 1995, is headquartered in which US city?
Denver
Its founder, Will Glennon, went on to chair World Kindness USA.
Q 05'Pay it forward' means repaying a good deed how?
By doing a kindness for someone else
The concept is also called serial reciprocity, and it even exists in contract law as a way of settling loans.
Q 06The phrase 'pay it forward' may have been coined by Lily Hardy Hammond in a book published in which year?
1916
The book was In the Garden of Delight; Robert Heinlein's 1951 novel Between Planets helped popularise the phrase.
Q 07Which child actor starred in the 2000 film Pay It Forward, based on Catherine Ryan Hyde's novel?
Haley Joel Osment
Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt co-starred; the boy's school project is to do three good deeds and ask each recipient to pass them on.
Q 08The principle of treating others as you would want to be treated is known as what?
The Golden Rule
Its negative form, 'do not do to others what you would not want done to you', is sometimes called the Silver Rule.
Q 09Which Chinese philosopher may have first stated 'do not do to others what you would not want done to you'?
Confucius
His concept of ren, shared humanity, is read by scholars as kindness toward others, though he advised repaying hatred with justice, not kindness.
Q 10Asked to explain the whole Torah on one foot, which sage said, 'What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow'?
Hillel the Elder
He added: 'this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.'
Q 11Jesus proclaimed 'do to others as you would have them do to you' during which famous teaching?
The Sermon on the Mount
Versions of the rule turn up in most of the world's religions and creeds.
Q 12In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the traveller is robbed on the road from Jerusalem to which city?
Jericho
A priest and a Levite pass by before the Samaritan, an outsider from a rival community, stops to help.
Q 13'Good Samaritan laws' protect people who do what?
Give reasonable help to someone in peril
Q 21Studies at which university used games with babies to conclude that kindness is inherent to human beings?
Yale
Related work traces empathy to 'motor mirroring' in the first months of life, leading to toddlers comforting distressed peers.
Q 22Which Robert Trivers concept explains why animals help others who will help them back later?
Reciprocal altruism
Vampire bats regurgitating blood for hungry roost-mates are the textbook example.
Q 23Which R. J. Palacio novel about a boy with facial differences launched the 'Choose Kind' movement?
Wonder
Auggie Pullman starts fifth grade at Beecher Prep; the book became a 2017 film with Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson.
They exist so bystanders don't hesitate for fear of being sued; civil-law countries tend instead to impose a legal duty to rescue.
Q 14The word 'kindness' comes from an Old English root related to 'kind', meaning what?
Nature or family
The suggestion is that kindness was first seen as the natural way to treat one's own kin, and dates in English from about 1300.
Q 15In his Rhetoric, Aristotle defined kindness (charis) as what?
Helpfulness towards someone in need
He said it should be rendered freely, 'not in return for anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself'.
Q 16Which philosopher argued an act has moral worth only when done from duty, not fleeting feeling?
Immanuel Kant
Nietzsche took the opposite tack, calling kindness and pity 'slave-morality' virtues that could stifle greatness.
Q 17Which French philosopher popularised, and possibly coined, the word 'altruism' in the 19th century?
Auguste Comte
The founding sociologist's coinage is now a major topic for evolutionary biologists studying why animals help each other.
Q 18Economist James Andreoni's term for the selfish pleasure people feel from 'doing good' is what?
Warm-glow giving
It explains why donors like plaques with their names on, and why government grants don't fully crowd out private giving.
Q 19Which hormone is nicknamed the 'cuddle hormone' or 'love hormone' for its role in bonding?
Oxytocin
It's released during hugging, childbirth and breastfeeding, and is often invoked in the science of why kindness feels good.
Q 20According to kindness research, what do adults who volunteer report compared with non-volunteers?
Less depression, more happiness
In one experiment, people told to spend money on someone else ended up happier than those who spent it on themselves, whatever the amount.
Q 24R. J. Palacio drew inspiration for her Auggie Pullman novel partly from a song by which singer?
Natalie Merchant
The other spark was her own son's distressed reaction to seeing a girl with facial deformities.
Q 25Where did Megan Murphy leave the painted rock that began the Kindness Rocks Project in 2015?
Cape Cod
Painted 'kindness rocks' have since spread to the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Haiti, with Facebook groups tracking where they turn up.
Q 26GivingTuesday, launched in 2012 at New York's 92nd Street Y, falls on the Tuesday after which holiday?
Thanksgiving
It was pitched as the generous answer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and became an independent nonprofit in 2019.
Q 27Which Albanian-Indian nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize?
Mother Teresa
The citation praised her 'work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress'; she was canonised in 2016.
Q 28Which organisation has won the Nobel Peace Prize three times, more than any other recipient?
The Red Cross
Its wins came in 1917, 1944 and 1963; the UN refugee agency has won twice.
Q 29In 1969, Fred Rogers famously testified before a US Senate subcommittee to save funding for what?
Public broadcasting (PBS)
Nixon wanted to halve LBJ's $20 million; Rogers' gentle six-minute plea won over Senator Pastore and is still watched by millions online.
Q 30Which steel magnate wrote the 1889 essay 'The Gospel of Wealth' and funded thousands of public libraries?
Andrew Carnegie
His libraries went up across the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, and he also backed world peace and scientific research.