Does Prosocial Behavior Predict Well-Being During a Life Transition?: An Experimental Investigation

Life transitions, which typically involve people moving from one life stage to another, are common, stressful and consequential periods. While previous research has offered a number of effective strategies to promote well-being during stressful times (e.g., exercise, sleep, mindfulness), most strategies focus attention on oneself. Given the growing literature demonstrating that engaging in generous actions can promote happiness, we investigate whether engaging in prosocial action can promote well-being during a life transition: starting university. In a preregistered experiment, 416 first-year university students (1,433 observations) were randomly assigned to either engage in prosocial acts, self-care activities, or a neutral control task one day a week for six consecutive weeks. Participants reported their happiness on intervention days and weekly positive affect and state anxiety at the end of the week, throughout the intervention period. Contrary to the pre-registered hypotheses, participants in the prosocial and self-care conditions did not report greater weekly well-being than participants in the control condition. However, exploratory analyses revealed that participants in both the prosocial and self-care conditions reported greater happiness on intervention days than participants in the control condition. These findings extend our knowledge on the potential benefits of prosociality, and suggest that prosociality may offer an additional route to short-term happiness during life transitions.