20 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
'It's Up to You': Experimentally Manipulated Autonomy Support for Prosocial Behavior Improves Well-Being in Two Cultures Over Six Weeks
Previous research has demonstrated a strong link between prosocial behavior – particularly autonomous prosocial behavior – and well-being. Little is known, however, about whether and how autonomy might be boosted in the context of everyday kindnesses. We tested the effect of supporting students’ autonomy on well-being gains from practicing acts of kindness in a six-week randomized experimental study in the United States and South Korea. As predicted, performing kind acts while receiving autonomy support led to greater improvements in well-being than performing kind acts without autonomy support or engaging in comparison activities (i.e. focusing on one’s academic work, with or without autonomy support). Notably, these well-being improvements were mediated by feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The current study is one of the first to demonstrate the causal effect of autonomous prosocial behavior on well-being, as well as the psychological mechanism (i.e. need satisfaction) explaining this effect
Moderators of Wellbeing Interventions:Why Do Some People Respond More Positively Than Others?
Interventions rarely have a universal effect on all individuals. Reasons ranging from participant characteristics, context and fidelity of intervention completion could cause some people to respond more positively than others. Understanding these individual differences in intervention response may provide clues to the mechanisms behind the intervention, as well as inform future designs to make interventions maximally beneficial for all. Here we focus on an intervention designed to improve adolescent wellbeing, and explore potential moderators using a representative and well-powered sample. 16-year old participants (N = 932) in the Twins Wellbeing Intervention Study logged online once a week to complete control and wellbeing-enhancing activities consecutively. Throughout the study participants also provided information about a range of potential moderators of intervention response including demographics, seasonality, personality, baseline characteristics, activity fit, and effort. As expected, some individuals gained more from the intervention than others; we used multi-level modelling to test for moderation effects that could explain these individual differences. Of the 15 moderators tested, none significantly explained individual differences in intervention response in the intervention and follow-up phases. Self-reported effort and baseline positive affect had a notable effect in moderating response in the control phase, during which there was no overall improvement in wellbeing and mental health. Our results did not replicate the moderation effects that have been suggested by previous literature and future work needs to reconcile these differences. They also show that factors that have previously been shown to influence baseline wellbeing do not also influence an individual's ability to benefit from a wellbeing intervention. Although future research should continue to explore potential moderators of intervention efficacy, our results suggest that the beneficial effect of positive activities in adolescents were universal across such factors as sex and socioeconomic status, bolstering claims of the scalability of positive activities to increase adolescent wellbeing
Making it last: Combating hedonic adaptation in romantic relationships
Is the waning of passion and satisfaction in romantic relationships inevitable, or can the honeymoon period be sustained? The Hedonic Adaptation Prevention model, which describes the mechanisms by which people adapt to positive life changes, posits that hedonic adaptation is a powerful barrier to sustained relationship well-being and suggests how to thwart it. In this paper, we apply the model to a new area of study - namely, intimate relationships. We explore the practices, habits, and activities that can increase the number of positive events and emotions in relationships, boost their variety, lower a couple's entitled aspirations, and build their appreciation - all variables that can serve to slow adaptation and increase well-being. Additionally, we discuss types of romantic relationships (e.g. long-distance relationships and unhealthy relationships) that may be relatively less susceptible to hedonic adaptation. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC
Everyday prosociality in the workplace: The reinforcing benefits of giving, getting, and glimpsing.
A functional analysis of prosociality considers how predispositions for prosocial behavior prompt, reinforce, and propagate kind behaviors in the real world. To examine the effects of practicing, receiving, and observing everyday prosociality-as well as the mechanisms underlying these effects-we randomly assigned employees in a Spanish corporate workplace (N = 111) to be Givers, Receivers, and Controls. Givers practiced 5 acts of kindness for a personalized list of Receivers over 4 weeks. We found that Givers and Receivers mutually benefited in well-being in both the short-term (e.g., on weekly measures of competence and autonomy) and the long-term (e.g., Receivers became happier after 2 months, and Givers became less depressed and more satisfied with their lives and jobs). In addition, Givers' prosocial acts inspired others to act: Receivers paid their acts of kindness forward with 278% more prosocial behaviors than Controls. Our results reveal that practicing everyday prosociality is both emotionally reinforcing and contagious (inspiring kindness and generating hedonic rewards in others) and that receiving everyday prosociality is an unequivocally positive experience (which may further reinforce Givers' actions). Prosociality's benefits shed light on its surprising ubiquity in humanity compared with our closest evolutionary cousins. (PsycINFO Database Recor
Stability and Change in Genetic and Environmental Influences on Well-being in Response to an Intervention
Genetic and environmental influences on complex traits can change in response to developmental and environmental contexts. Here we explore the impact of a positive activity intervention on the genetic and environmental influences on well-being and mental health in a sample of 750 adolescent twins. Twins completed a 10-week online well-being intervention, consisting of kindness and gratitude tasks and matched control activities. The results showed significant improvements both in well-being and in internalizing symptoms in response to the intervention activities. We used multivariate twin analyses of repeated measures, tracking stability and change in genetic and environmental influences, to assess the impact of this environmental intervention on these variance components. The heritability of well-being remained high both before and after the intervention, and the same genetic effects were important at each stage, even as well-being increased. The overall magnitude of environmental influences was also stable across the intervention; however, different non-shared environmental influences emerged during the intervention. Our study highlights the value of exploring the innovations in non-shared environmental influences that could provide clues to the mechanisms behind improvements in well-being. The findings also emphasize that even traits strongly influenced by genetics, like well-being, are subject to change in response to environmental interventions
Study Design.
<p>Circles represent weeks when participants logged into the website to take part in the study. Filled circles reflect weeks during which participants completed scales measuring well-being and mental health.</p
Parameter Estimates and 95% Confidence Intervals of Genetic and Environmental Influence from Multivariate Twin Analyses for Mental Health.
<p>Parameter Estimates and 95% Confidence Intervals of Genetic and Environmental Influence from Multivariate Twin Analyses for Mental Health.</p
Intraclass Correlations for Identical and Non-Identical Twin Pairs.
<p>Intraclass Correlations for Identical and Non-Identical Twin Pairs.</p