Sunday, October 3, 2021

If giving money to the Red Cross increases well-being, does taking money from the Red Cross increase ill-being?

If giving money to the Red Cross increases well-being, does taking money from the Red Cross increase ill-being? – Evidence from three experiments. Frank Martela, Richard M. Ryan. Journal of Research in Personality, Volume 93, August 2021, 104114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104114

Highlights

• A small sum of money donated to Red Cross in a button-pushing activity increased participant well-being.

• Similar sum of money detracted from a donation to Red Cross in a button-pushing activity did not increase ill-being.

• Participants might compensate their negative impact by emphasizing the positive impact they are having towards science.

Abstract: Does having a negative impact on others decrease one’s well-being? In three separate pre-registered studies (n = 111, n = 445, & n = 447), participants engaged in a button-pushing activity for 4 min in three conditions: earning money for themselves (~60c), also earning money for the Red Cross (~15c), or also reducing the money distributed to the Red Cross (~15c). The results of the individual studies and a meta-analysis across them showed that positive impact increased well-being, but even though participants were aware of the negative impact they were having, there was no increased ill-being in the negative impact condition. In Study 3 we examined whether participants in the negative impact condition are mentally compensating by emphasizing the positive impact they are having towards science.

Keywords: Antisocial behaviorIll-beingProsocial behaviorProsocial impactWell-being

5. General discussion

In this series of studies we set out to examine whether engaging in behavior that has negative social impact would lead to ill-being in a fashion mirroring the positive effects of engaging in behaviors with positive social impact. More particularly, in three studies, we examined participants who were exposed to similar dosage of positive impact and negative impact effect – in this case donating money to the Red Cross or taking money away from the Red Cross – to examine whether prosocial impact would increase well-being and antisocial impact increase ill-being.

First, findings from our initial study showed that although the manipulations were effective, effect sizes were modest. We thus moved to larger samples in Studies 2 and 3. In line with previous findings (e.g., Martela and Ryan, 2016aMartela and Ryan, 2016bMartela and Ryan, 2020), the zero-order correlations in both studies revealed that beneficence satisfaction and frustration were associated with increased well-being and ill-being, respectively. Also in line with previous research (e.g. Aknin et al., 2013Martela and Ryan, 2016a), these studies demonstrated that engaging in prosocial behavior increased participants’ sense of vitality (Study 2), situational meaning (Studies 2 & 3), and positive affect (Study 3). Meta-analysis across the three studies confirmed these positive effects on positive affect, vitality, and situational meaning. However, even though we used three different indicators of ill-being and two sufficiently powered studies, we found no evidence that the negative impact condition increased people’s ill-being, either when examining the studies individually or when conducting a meta-analysis across them. Instead, people in the negative impact condition, as compared to the neutral condition, experienced more prosocial impact, vitality, and meaningfulness in Study 2, and more situational meaningfulness and a sense that they were helping science in Study 3. The meta-analysis across three studies confirmed both these positive effects of being in the negative impact condition on well-being indicators as well as showing positive effects on both beneficence satisfaction and frustration relative to participants in the neutral condition. Perhaps partially explaining this result, findings in Study 3 showed that participants in the negative impact condition also reported feeling that they contributed more towards science than participants in the neutral condition. In recognizing the potentially negative impact they were having, the participants might have consciously or unconsciously focused upon the positive impact of their activity, perhaps to mitigate any feelings associated with their negative impact.

Feeling one is harming others is arguably hard to integrate (Martela & Ryan, 2020Ryan & Deci, 2017), leading people to engage in defenses and rationalizations (Simler and Hanson, 2018Tsang, 2002Weinstein et al., 2012), as well as attempts to repair harm where possible (Legate et al., 2015). The psychological well-being dynamics in antisocial situations thus might be more complex and less straightforward than often thought – this could also explain why so little research on the topic has been previously published. The present results thus emphasize the need for more research in the future to further identify the defense mechanisms that might lead participants having an antisocial impact not suffering from it but instead even having a higher well-being because of it.

Certain limitations need to be acknowledged. First, all samples were gathered within one country and through the same online channel, Mturk, making it important to replicate the findings in other samples and cultures. Second, well-being was measured using self-reports, calling for future research utilizing others ways of measuring it. Third, one of our key findings was negative – we didn’t find any effect of antisocial behavior on well-being and ill-being indicators raising the question as to the adequacy of the research design. Yet arguing against this, manipulation checks showed that participants realized that they were having a negative impact in the negative impact condition, and on the other side of the ledger, the positive impact condition demonstrated that the paradigm could in principle cause differences in well-being. Minimally, what this study thus appears to show is that the same “dosage” of impact, which when positive is capable of increasing participants well-being is not enough, when negative, to increase participants ill-being to a similar degree. This led us to look for and find that participants might be compensating for the negative impact by emphasizing the positive impacts the same activity was causing. We hope this research spurs more inquiry into the potential asymmetry of impact on well-being and ill-being from beneficial and harmful results of one’s actions.

Open practices

Preregistration: All three studies were preregistered at OSF.

Data: The data for all three studies is publicly available at: https://osf.io/5h4cr/?view_only=641468da56d24730b92f1b4a3b666f8e.


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