The COVID-19 pandemic presents a significant challenge to wellbeing for people around the world. Here, we examine which individual and societal factors can predict the extent to which individuals suffer or thrive during the COVID-19 outbreak, with survey data collected from 26,684 participants in 51 countries from 17 April to 15 May 2020. We show that wellbeing is linked to an individual's recent experiences of specific momentary positive and negative emotions, including love, calm, determination, and loneliness. Higher socioeconomic status was associated with better wellbeing. The present study provides a rich map of emotional experiences and wellbeing around the world during the COVID-19 outbreak, and points to calm, connection, and control as central to our wellbeing at this time of collective crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a significant challenge to wellbeing for people around the world. Here, we examine which individual and societal factors can predict the extent to which individuals suffer or thrive during the COVID-19 outbreak, with survey data collected from 26,684 participants in 51 countries from 17 April to 15 May 2020. We show that wellbeing is linked to an individual’s recent experiences of specific momentary positive and negative emotions, including love, calm, determination, and loneliness. Higher socioeconomic status was associated with better wellbeing. The present study provides a rich map of emotional experiences and wellbeing around the world during the COVID-19 outbreak, and points to calm, connection, and control as central to our wellbeing at this time of collective crisis.

has been submitted for publication and has not yet been peer reviewed. AcknowledgementsThis research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 846839, awarded to Anne Reitz. There are no conflicts of interest to disclose.The preregistration of hypotheses and the analysis plan, code, and data are available on the OSF (https://osf.io/ksugw/). The research materials can also be found on the OSF (Study 1: https://osf.io/fwak9/; Study 2: https://osf.io/evys8).

Objective: Why personality changes in young adulthood remains a critical theoretical and empirical question. We studied personality change during the education-to-work transition, including (1) the specific timing of personality change, (2) the degree of individual variability in change, and (3) the link between sense of mastery and personality change. Methods: We used data from two intensive longitudinal studies. Study 1 included 5 waves of data across 2 years during the university-to-work transition (N=309; mean-aged 25). Study 2 included 3 waves of data across 8 months during an internship-heavy teacher education program (N=317; mean-aged 22). We assessed personality traits and personality states and work-related and general sense of mastery using questionnaires and experience sampling.Results: First, we found no evidence for mean-level personality maturation. Second, young adults differed significantly in change of personality traits and aggregated states. Third, young adults with higher levels of work-related sense of mastery showed more positive changes in trait Conscientiousness. Decreases in general sense of mastery predicted later decreases in state Emotional Stability and vice versa. Change in general sense of mastery correlated with personality change. Conclusions: Sense of mastery seems to be part of a dynamic short-term process underlying personality change in young adulthood.

Young adults differ in their self-esteem change during the university-to-work transition. The short-term processes related to individual variability in change are not yet fully understood. We examined experiences of pride in daily life as a dynamic process underlying self-esteem change. We followed 238 Dutch master students over 8 months across their university-to-work transition. We used dynamic and multilevel structural equation models to analyze three waves of 14-day experience sampling data. We first examined momentary and daily associations between pride and self-esteem on the within-person level. We then examined the correlation between change in pride and change in self-esteem across months, and the extent to which pride predicted variability in self-esteem change. Results indicated positive within-person associations between pride and self-esteem at the momentary level, but not at the daily level, suggesting that these short-term processes may predominantly unfold across moments. The direction and the magnitude of these short-term associations between pride and self-esteem differed substantially across individuals. Across months, changes in pride were positively correlated with changes in self-esteem, however, pride experiences before graduation did not predict variability in later self-esteem change. Findings suggest that pride may help explain self-esteem change during the university-to-work transition.