Abstract
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic, the accompanying lockdown measures, and their possible long-term effects have made mental health a pressing public health concern. Acts that focus on benefiting others-known as prosocial behaviors-offer one promising intervention that is both flexible and low cost. However, neither the range of emotional states prosocial acts impact nor the size of those effects is currently clear-both of which directly influence its attractiveness as a treatment option.
Objective: To assess the effect of prosocial activity on emotional well-being (happiness, belief that one’s life is valuable) and mental health (anxiety, depression).
Methods: 1,234 respondents from the United States and Canada were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and randomly assigned (by computer software) to perform prosocial (N = 411), self-focused (N = 423), or neutral (N = 400) behaviors three times a week for three weeks. A follow-up assessment was given two weeks after the intervention. Participants were blind to alternative conditions. Analyses were based on 1052 participants (Nprosocial = 347, Nself = 365, Nneutral = 340).
Findings: Those in the prosocial condition did not differ on any outcome from those in the self-focused or neutral acts conditions during the intervention or at follow-up, nor did prosocial effects differ for those who had been negatively affected socially or economically by the pandemic (all p’s > 0.05). Exploratory analyses that more tightly controlled for study compliance found that prosocial acts reduced anxiety relative to neutral acts control (β = -0.12 [95% CI: -0.22 to -0.02]) and increased the belief that one’s life is valuable (β = 0.11 [95% CI: 0.03 to 0.19]). These effects persisted throughout the intervention and at follow-up.
Conclusion: Prosocial acts may provide small, lasting benefits to emotional well-being and mental health. Future work should replicate these results using tighter, pre-registered controls on study compliance.
【초록키워드】 Treatment, public health, pandemic, Anxiety, Depression, lockdown, mental health, COVID-19 pandemic, Intervention, outcome, Measures, Compliance, Control, Follow-up, Canada, Neutral, emotional, participant, blind, Future, Effect, benefit, Randomly, flexible, not differ, recruited, the United State, replicate, reduced, condition, analysis, assigned, conditions, Act, Mechanical, negatively affected, 【제목키워드】 COVID-19, mental health, randomized trial, emotional, Registered,