University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Doi
Abstract
In this seven-week experimental intervention, 121 adults participated in a randomized control trial testing whether daily reflection on social experiences has a beneficial impact on mental and physical health, and, if so, whether positivity resonance mediates this relationship. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, and received daily e-mails with questions designed to prime their attention to condition-specific topics. To prime attention to social aspects of eudaimonic well-being, participants randomly assigned to the social experience focus condition were asked to reflect on daily social interactions and rate how “close” and “in tune” they felt to the people with whom they interacted. Because socially-experienced positive emotions were speculated to drive health benefits, a second eudaimonic condition offered tighter control by focusing on equally-positive, but nonsocial, aspects of eudaimonic well-being. That is, participants assigned to the nonsocial experience focus condition were asked to reflect on daily enjoyable events they experienced alone that day and rate how “meaningful” and “rewarding” the events had been. In a neutrally-valenced control – the task focus condition – participants were asked to reflect on daily tasks and rate how “useful” and “important” those tasks had been. Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), illness symptoms, flourishing, and loneliness were measured at pre- and post-intervention to assess how each condition impacted health and well-being. The overarching hypothesis that people in the social experience focus condition would report increases in positivity resonance, which would in turn promote their health and wellbeing was largely unsupported. No differences emerged between any of the conditions in positivity resonance, or in two of the four outcome variables: RSA and flourishing. In an unexpected finding, both eudaimonic interventions prompted people to engage in more discrete daily social interactions, which in turn reduced their feelings of loneliness relative to the control. In addition, the two eudaimonic wellbeing interventions prompted decreases in illness symptoms relative to the control, but only among older adults. These findings may shed light on how people can fine-tune their daily thoughts and behaviors in order to become more socially engaged in their daily lives and ultimately promote lasting changes to their wellbeing.Doctor of Philosoph
