2.5. Discussion
Study 1 suggests that participation in real-world school programs, such as iGen, that model and facilitate meaningful, prosocial intergenerational contact between children and Elders is associated with greater well-being, psychological functioning, and prosocial intentions among children. Indeed, despite very high levels of well-being and prosociality among iGen students, we observed a positive association between meaningful participation and various measures, such as life satisfaction, vitality, social connection, empathy, and prosociality. Therefore, these findings are consistent with the possibility that program engagement is related to greater positive psychological functioning. It is encouraging to see that the relationships between meaning and well-being/prosociality remained when controlling for the friendships students made with Elders, suggesting that students may have found their prosocial actions to be the most meaningful aspect of their interactions in iGen.The iGen program is an immersive 10-month long program spanning the academic year, which provides youth with several opportunities to foster meaningful connections and practice prosociality. Could participation in a shorter prosocial program also be associated with greater well-being? To examine this question in a parallel study, we assessed happiness before and after children volunteered for two hours in a C2C Giving Factory—as part of a classroom field trip or outing with their parents or sports team—where they packaged essential items for a local child who experiences poverty. Critically, child volunteers were randomly assigned to either prepare a package for a similar child (i.e., someone of their gender and similar age) or a less similar child (i.e., someone several years older or younger and/or a different gender).The design of Study 2 complements and improves upon Study 1 by allowing us to investigate two key additional questions important for the study of prosociality. First, we could examine whether children reported any changes in happiness from before to after engaging in a relatively brief, real-world act of generosity. As such, we were able to control for baseline levels of happiness. Importantly, rather than approximate prosocial engagement from the meaning students derived from their prosocial interactions as in Study 1, we could establish a more direct link between real-world prosocial behavior and happiness to help eliminate alternative explanations. Second, our experimental design permitted us to probe whether their giving to a similar (vs. dissimilar) other was associated with greater happiness gains. In light of past research suggesting that people may enjoy helping similar others more than dissimilar others [