Prosocial behavior promotes positive emotion during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about humans’ physical and mental well-being. In response, there has been an urgent “call to action” for psychological interventions that enhance positive emotion and psychological resilience. Prosocial behavior has been shown to effectively promote well-being, but is this strategy effective during a pandemic when ongoing apprehension for personal safety could acutely heighten self-focused concern? In two online pre-registered experiments (N =1,623) conducted during the early stage of pandemic (April 2020), we examined this question by randomly assigning participants to engage in other- or self-beneficial action. For the first time, we manipulated whether prosocial behavior was related to the source of stress (COVID-19): participants purchased COVID-19-related (personal protective equipment, PPE) or COVID-19-unrelated items (food/writing supplies) for themselves or someone else. Consistent with pre-registered hypotheses, prosocial (vs. non-prosocial or proself) behavior led to higher levels of self-reported positive affect, empathy and social connectedness. Notably, we also found that psychological benefits were larger when generous acts were unrelated to COVID-19 (vs. related to COVID-19). When prosocial and proself spending involved identical COVID-19 PPEs items, prosocial behavior’s benefits were detectable only on empathy and social connectedness, but not on post-task positive affect. These findings suggest that while there are boundary conditions to be considered, generous action offers one strategy to bolster well-being during the pandemic.