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Lee (Archer Lee), Yeeun

University of British Columbia

Engaging in prosocial behaviour—voluntary acts to benefit others—may be effective for restoring individuals’ social connections with others. In three studies, I investigated the links between daily loneliness, social contact, and prosocial behaviour. Study 1 examined daily associations between loneliness and prosocial engagement using daily life assessments of 100 middle-aged and older adults in the community. Adults high in chronic loneliness, but not those low in chronic loneliness, exhibited decreased prosocial behaviours on days during which they reported elevated transient loneliness. The findings suggest that chronic loneliness may elicit maladaptive responses to transient loneliness by reducing prosocial engagement. Building on these findings, Studies 2 and 3 investigated whether an intervention designed to increase daily prosocial behaviour would reduce the subjective experience of loneliness and increase the objective number of social contacts among university students (Study 2) and lonely adults in the community (Study 3). In Study 2 (N = 407), the kindness intervention—compared to an active control intervention—increased daily social contact, especially with close others, and reduced daily loneliness for participants who reported high baseline loneliness. In Study 3 (N = 208), participants who completed a modified version of the same kindness intervention showed sustained daily social contact after the intervention, whereas participants who completed an active control intervention showed decreased daily social contact after the intervention. The kindness intervention also reduced daily feelings of loneliness, though not significantly more than the active control intervention. This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on the benefits of prosocial behavior by providing preliminary evidence that it may help to address social disconnection. However, further work will be needed to refine the intervention and confirm the effects documented in these initial studies.

Text

2023-08-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/85727

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/