To slow the transmission of COVID-19, countries around the world have implemented social distancing and stay-at-home policies-potentially leading people to rely more on household members for their ...sense of closeness and belonging. To understand the conditions under which people felt the most connected, we examined whether changes in overall feelings of social connection varied by household size and composition. In two pre-registered studies, undergraduates in Canada (NStudy 1 = 548) and adults primarily from the U.S. and U.K. (NStudy 2 = 336) reported their perceived social connection once before and once during the pandemic. In both studies, living with a partner robustly and uniquely buffered shifts in social connection during the first phases of the pandemic (βStudy 1 = .22, βStudy 2 = .16). In contrast, neither household size nor other aspects of household composition predicted changes in connection. We discuss implications for future social distancing policies that aim to balance physical health with psychological health.
Evolutionary models of cooperation require proximate mechanisms that sustain prosociality despite inherent costs to individuals. The "warm glow" that often follows prosocial acts could provide one ...such mechanism; if so, these emotional benefits may be observable very early in development. Consistent with this hypothesis, the present study finds that before the age of two, toddlers exhibit greater happiness when giving treats to others than receiving treats themselves. Further, children are happier after engaging in costly giving--forfeiting their own resources--than when giving the same treat at no cost. By documenting the emotionally rewarding properties of costly prosocial behavior among toddlers, this research provides initial support for the claim that experiencing positive emotions when giving to others is a proximate mechanism for human cooperation.
In the last two decades, social psychologists have identified several key spending strategies that promote happiness such as making time-saving purchases (buying time) and spending money on others ...(prosocial spending). Although the emotional benefits of these two spending strategies are well-documented in the current literature, it is unclear whether the effectiveness of these strategies vary depending on individual characteristics. To address this research gap, we surveyed an economically diverse sample of 15,545 Americans about their subjective well-being, spending behavior, personal values and beliefs, as well as demographics including age, gender, and income. Across demographic groups, spending money on others was robustly related to happiness. Spending money on others was also associated with greater happiness regardless of whether participants believed that they would be happier spending money on others. In contrast, the relationship between buying time and happiness was somewhat less reliable. Although gender and personal income did not moderate the relationship between buying time and happiness, the relationship was only marginally significant for men, and non-significant within each income bracket. Our results also indicated that those who valued money over time were significantly happier when they used money to buy time, whereas those who valued time over money reported similar levels of happiness whether or not they bought time. Taken together, the present research shows that the relationship between prosocial spending, buying time, and subjective well-being is largely consistent across the different demographic groups we examined.
Social Interactions and Well-Being Sandstrom, Gillian M.; Dunn, Elizabeth W.
Personality & social psychology bulletin,
07/2014, Letnik:
40, Številka:
7
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Although we interact with a wide network of people on a daily basis, the social psychology literature has primarily focused on interactions with close friends and family. The present research tested ...whether subjective well-being is related not only to interactions with these strong ties but also to interactions with weak social ties (i.e., acquaintances). In Study 1, students experienced greater happiness and greater feelings of belonging on days when they interacted with more classmates than usual. Broadening the scope in Studies 2A and 2B to include all daily interactions (with both strong and weak ties), we again found that weak ties are related to social and emotional well-being. The current results highlight the power of weak ties, suggesting that even social interactions with the more peripheral members of our social networks contribute to our well-being.
In the U.S., 95% of smartphone users admit to having used their smartphones during their latest social gathering. Although smartphones are designed to connect us with others, such smartphone use may ...create a source of distraction that disconnects us from the people in our immediate social environment. Focusing on one fundamental social relationship—between parents and their children—we examined whether smartphones made parents feel distracted, thereby undermining key benefits parents reap when spending time with their children. Ina field experiment at a science museum (Study 1), we randomly assigned parents to use their phones frequently or infrequently. Frequent phone use led parents to feel more distracted, which in turn impaired feelings of social connection and the meaning that parents derived when spending time with their children. In an additional weeklong diary study (Study 2), we found further evidence that smartphones can distract parents from reaping a sense of social connection when spending time with their children. These studies suggest that being constantly connected to the Internet may carry subtle costs for the fabric of social life.
•Limiting the frequency of checking email throughout the day reduced daily stress.•Lower daily stress predicts greater well-being (e.g., higher positive affect).•The frequency of checking email did ...not directly impact other well-being outcomes.
Using email is one of the most common online activities in the world today. Yet, very little experimental research has examined the effect of email on well-being. Utilizing a within-subjects design, we investigated how the frequency of checking email affects well-being over a period of two weeks. During one week, 124 adults were randomly assigned to limit checking their email to three times a day; during the other week, participants could check their email an unlimited number of times per day. We found that during the limited email use week, participants experienced significantly lower daily stress than during the unlimited email use week. Lower stress, in turn, predicted higher well-being on a diverse range of well-being outcomes. These findings highlight the benefits of checking email less frequently for reducing psychological stress.
Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness Dunn, Elizabeth W; Aknin, Lara B; Norton, Michael I
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
03/2008, Letnik:
319, Številka:
5870
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Although much research has examined the effect of income on happiness, we suggest that how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn. Specifically, we ...hypothesized that spending money on other people may have a more positive impact on happiness than spending money on oneself. Providing converging evidence for this hypothesis, we found that spending more of one's income on others predicted greater happiness both cross-sectionally (in a nationally representative survey study) and longitudinally (in a field study of windfall spending). Finally, participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves.
Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social ...interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.
Research indicates that spending money on others-prosocial spending-leads to greater happiness than spending money on oneself (e.g., Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008, 2014). These findings have received ...widespread attention because they offer insight into why people engage in costly prosocial behavior, and what constitutes happier spending more broadly. However, most studies on prosocial spending (like most research on the emotional benefits of generosity) utilized small sample sizes (n < 100/cell). In light of new, improved standards for evidentiary value, we conducted high-powered registered replications of the central paradigms used in prosocial spending research. In Experiment 1, 712 students were randomly assigned to make a purchase for themselves or a stranger in need and then reported their happiness. As predicted, participants assigned to engage in prosocial (vs. personal) spending reported greater momentary happiness. In Experiment 2, 1950 adults recalled a time they spent money on themselves or someone else and then reported their current happiness; contrary to predictions, participants in the prosocial spending condition did not report greater happiness than those in the personal spending condition. Because low levels of task engagement may have produced these null results, we conducted a replication with minor changes designed to increase engagement; in this Experiment 3 (N = 5,199), participants who recalled a prosocial (vs. personal) spending memory reported greater happiness but differences were small. Taken together, these studies support the hypothesis that spending money on others does promote happiness, but demonstrate that the magnitude of the effect depends on several methodological features.
This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: Human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial ...spending). In Study 1, survey data from 136 countries were examined and showed that prosocial spending is associated with greater happiness around the world, in poor and rich countries alike. To test for causality, in Studies 2a and 2b, we used experimental methodology, demonstrating that recalling a past instance of prosocial spending has a causal impact on happiness across countries that differ greatly in terms of wealth (Canada, Uganda, and India). Finally, in Study 3, participants in Canada and South Africa randomly assigned to buy items for charity reported higher levels of positive affect than participants assigned to buy the same items for themselves, even when this prosocial spending did not provide an opportunity to build or strengthen social ties. Our findings suggest that the reward experienced from helping others may be deeply ingrained in human nature, emerging in diverse cultural and economic contexts.
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