4. General Discussion
Across two studies, we examined whether engagement in two real-world prosociality programs was associated with greater psychological well-being in primary school-aged children. Using both a correlational survey and a pre-registered experiment, we saw converging evidence supporting this hypothesis. Notably, involvement in each program was associated with greater well-being despite differences in how much time children spent engaging in prosocial action—from a single afternoon to across an entire school year.The present findings align with previous research demonstrating an association between prosocial behavior and greater psychological well-being [Study 1 examined an immersive program that created a long-term, in-depth experience for primary school-aged children to develop their prosociality. Of course, the immersive nature of the program limits its capacity to only 25 students a year, which makes conducting a well-powered experiment on this program with a representative group of students particularly challenging. As a result, Study 1 relied on a correlational design and a small, unrepresentative sample, meaning we cannot determine whether participating in iGen Happier and more helpful students may be more likely to enroll in prosocial programs, such as iGen, and our data suggest that this may be the case. Students in Study 1 reported high levels of prosociality and well-being that were significantly above the midpoint of the scales. However, it is important to note that the iGen program attracts significant attention from the Saskatoon community, with ~150 applicants annually for only 25 spots. Thus, given the random selection process, our sample likely reflects the interests and well-being of the larger and broader applicant pool. Moreover, it is encouraging to see that levels of engagement with and meaning derived from participating in iGen the program were associated with psychological well-being, even among this sample reporting high levels of well-being. This finding is notable given that the restricted range and variability on our measures are likely to reduce the possibility of detecting statistically significant associations.Critically, future work could capitalize on the natural experimental context provided by iGen’s lottery selection process and should include a more direct measure of prosocial actions completed in the program. Specifically, researchers could broadly survey students across the school district—including those randomly selected to participate in iGen, those who applied but were not selected, and those who did not apply to iGen at all—both before and after the iGen program. This design would help to move closer to a causal test of program participation, better account for self-selection biases, and provide a baseline measure of well-being to assess overall levels of change in well-being. Further, including a more direct measure of prosocial engagement in the program rather than an approximation through the meaning derived from the program will help eliminate alternative explanations. More broadly, future studies should aim to recruit larger samples so that additional interesting questions can be explored, such as whether there are gender differences in the types of helping enacted or the emotional rewards of kindness.Notably, we examined the iGen program during a particularly strange time—roughly seven months into iGen, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. To keep the community safe, students stopped attending Sherbrooke and completed their final three months of iGen individually, from home. Though technology connected students and Elders virtually through Zoom a handful of times, the iGen experience was considerably muted for the final third of the program. As such, our study provides a conservative examination of iGen and the strong correlations we observed between students’ truncated experiences and their well-being are encouraging as they suggest that there may be great potential for the program at full capacity. More work assessing iGen under standard conditions is needed. However, for now, the lives and capacities of the students, teachers, and administrators at schools and Elders and staff at long-term care homes around the world have been disrupted due to the pandemic and will continue to be for the foreseeable future (e.g., [In Study 2, we offset some of the limitations of Study 1 by conducting a pre-registered experiment with a much larger sample. Despite these methodological advantages, the experimental design did not include a control condition to help eliminate important alternative explanations. Indeed, in Study 2, there was an increase in happiness across both conditions from before to after preparing gifts for children who experience homelessness and/or poverty. It is difficult to rule out the possibility that this increase in happiness is simply due to the passage of time or social contact; it could be that children are becoming happier over the course of their afternoon together. For example, other studies have noted an increase in children’s well-being from pre- to post-assessment both among students who engaged in kind acts and an active control condition and thus fail to demonstrate that any gains in well-being are due to prosocial action (e.g., [Interestingly, despite work suggesting that helping similar others may be perceived as more emotionally rewarding (e.g., [Just as field work examining prosociality-focused interventions can advance underlying theories of prosociality development and psychological well-being, the present work also underscores the practical importance of performing real-world investigations. Indeed, scientific practice would do well to continue to go beyond the lab and evaluate the value of real-world programs already in the community. For example, data show that parents, teachers, and communities broadly are interested in fostering prosociality and want their children to be happy [Should our findings be replicable with additional rigorous experimental methods, the present field work can also provide initial information to practitioners and educators seeking to provide quality education to students around the world (e.g., [