‘It’s up to you’: Experimentally manipulated autonomy support for prosocial behavior improves well-being in two cultures over six weeks

By Katherine G. Nelson, M. Porta, Katherine Jacobs Bao, HyunJung Crystal, Lee, Incheol Choi, Sonja Lyubomirsky. 2015

138 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/04eb74c9f68cec00441167e1f43bc5a169bfb89e

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Citations in the corpus

Functions of Positive Emotions: Gratitude as a Motivator of Self-Improvement and Positive Change (2017, background): “…connectedness—is important to one’s success in a variety of selfimprovement endeavors, including weight loss (Wing & Jeffery, 1999), maintenance of New Year’s resolutions (Norcross & Vangarelli, 1989), adherence to medical treatment (DiMatteo, 2004), and being a kinder person (Nelson et al., 2015).”
Does Happiness Promote Career Success? Revisiting the Evidence (2018, background): “A plethora of experiments now also demonstrate that directing individuals to engage in prosocial behavior increases well-being (Chancellor, Margolis, Jacobs Bao, & Lyubomirsky, 2017; Layous, Lee, Choi, & Lyubomirsky, 2013; Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005; Nelson et al., 2015; Nelson, Layous, C”