IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0240349.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Suzanne van de Groep
  • Kiki Zanolie
  • Kayla H Green
  • Sophie W Sweijen
  • Eveline A Crone

Abstract

Adolescence is a formative phase for social development. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated regulations have led to many changes in adolescents’ lives, including limited opportunities for social interactions. The current exploratory study investigated the effect of the first weeks of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on Dutch adolescents’ (N = 53 with attrition, N = 36 without attrition) mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior. Longitudinal analyses comparing pre-pandemic measures to a three-week peri-pandemic daily diary study showed (i) decreases in empathic concern, opportunities for prosocial actions, and tension, (ii) stable levels of social value orientation, altruism, and dire prosociality, and (iii) increased levels of perspective-taking and vigor during the first weeks of lockdown. Second, this study investigated peri-pandemic effects of familiarity, need, and deservedness on giving behavior. To this end, we utilized novel hypothetical Dictator Games with ecologically valid targets associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescents showed higher levels of giving to a friend (a familiar other, about 51% of the total share), a doctor in a hospital (deserving target, 78%), and individuals with COVID-19 or a poor immune system (targets in need, 69 and 63%, respectively) compared to an unfamiliar peer (39%) This suggests that during the pandemic need and deservedness had a greater influence on adolescent giving than familiarity. Overall, this study demonstrates detrimental effects of the first weeks of lockdown on adolescents’ empathic concern and opportunities for prosocial actions, which are important predictors of healthy socio-emotional development. However, adolescents also showed marked resilience and a willingness to benefit others as a result of the lockdown, as evidenced by improved perspective-taking and mood, and high sensitivity to need and deservedness in giving to others.

Suggested Citation

  • Suzanne van de Groep & Kiki Zanolie & Kayla H Green & Sophie W Sweijen & Eveline A Crone, 2020. "A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-20, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0240349
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240349
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0240349&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0240349?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ya-Nan Fu & Ruodan Feng & Qun Liu & Yumei He & Ofir Turel & Shuyue Zhang & Qinghua He, 2022. "Awe and Prosocial Behavior: The Mediating Role of Presence of Meaning in Life and the Moderating Role of Perceived Social Support," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(11), pages 1-13, May.
    2. Blanco, Esther & Baier, Alexandra & Holzmeister, Felix & Jaber-Lopez, Tarek & Struwe, Natalie, 2022. "Substitution of social sustainability concerns under the Covid-19 pandemic," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    3. Yuan Zhi Seah, 2021. "COVID-19 and Its Effects on Attitudes toward Opportunity-Motivated Entrepreneurship: Before and after Lockdown," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-13, August.
    4. Raimundo Aguayo-Estremera & Gustavo R. Cañadas & Elena Ortega-Campos & Laura Pradas-Hernández & Begoña Martos-Cabrera & Almudena Velando-Soriano & Emilia I. de la Fuente-Solana, 2022. "Levels of Burnout and Engagement after COVID-19 among Psychology and Nursing Students in Spain: A Cohort Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-12, December.
    5. Henrike Sternberg & Janina Isabel Steinert & Tim Büthe, 2023. "Compliance in the Public versus the Private Realm: Economic Preferences, Institutional Trust and COVID-19 Health Behaviors," Munich Papers in Political Economy 28, Munich School of Politics and Public Policy and the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich.
    6. Marius Marici & Otilia Clipa & Remus Runcan & Iasmina Iosim, 2022. "Perceptions of Parenting during the COVID-19 Quarantine Period, in Suceava, the Epicenter of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Romania," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(23), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Henrike Sternberg & Janina Isabel Steinert & Tim Büthe, 2024. "Compliance in the public versus the private realm: Economic preferences, institutional trust and COVID‐19 health behaviors," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 1055-1119, May.
    8. Marina L. Butovskaya & Valentina N. Burkova & Ashley K. Randall & Silvia Donato & Julija N. Fedenok & Lauren Hocker & Kai M. Kline & Khodabakhsh Ahmadi & Ahmad M. Alghraibeh & Fathil Bakir Mutsher All, 2021. "Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Role of Empathy during COVID-19’s First Wave," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-35, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0240349. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.