Groups or values? Testing the effectiveness of online social cure, group‐affirmation, and self‐affirmation manipulations on wellbeing outcomes

Abstract

We tested the effectiveness of three brief, online manipulations theorised to have beneficial effects on wellbeing: a social cure manipulation priming important group memberships, a self‐affirmation manipulation priming important values, and a group‐affirmation manipulation priming values important to one's group. A control condition required respondents to reflect on films. Study 1 (N = 201) had no explicit stressor, whereas study 2 (N = 379) had an acute stressor immediately before the manipulations. The outcomes were a set of hedonic, evaluative, and eudaimonic wellbeing measures. With no acute stressor, all three manipulations boosted wellbeing perceptions, but in diverse ways. After a stressor, the social cure manipulation was the most frequent predictor. In all cases, main effects of the manipulations boosted wellbeing perceptions; however, where effects were moderated by baseline anxiety or stress induced by the stressor, the benefits were restricted to those lower in anxiety and stress. Overall, the results lend support to the idea that brief online manipulations, especially ones priming collective identities, can be beneficial for wellbeing. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Articles from and inspired by the fifth International Conference on Social Identity and Health

“…For example, McMahon et al (2023) use both an experimental paradigm and physiological measures to show that the effects of being informed that a task will be stressful (vs. challenging) affect stressrelated reactions to the task, but that these effects are a function of the group membership of the message source (ingroup vs. outgroup) and the status of the participant's ingroup (low vs. high). Meanwhile, Harris and Easterbrook (2024) use an experimental paradigm to test the effectiveness of brief online social cure, group-affirmation and selfaffirmation manipulations on well-being outcomes. Additionally, Skilton, McMahon, and Muldoon (2024) report experiments showing that identity salience (woman vs. runner) impacts women's intentions to exercise outside, as well as their sense of safety during this activity.…”

“…Finally, many of the papers in this special issue also bring new theoretical perspectives to bear on their topics, thereby enriching the SIAH. For example, Peters, Gomersall, Booth, and Lucock's (2023) Relatedly, the experiments reported by Harris and Easterbrook (2024) combine the approach of self-affirmation (which has previously been demonstrated to have benefits for individual well-being) with group salience priming, finding positive effects for group salience with and without this self-affirmation addition. These theoretical syntheses provide conceptual bridges to span the gap between group-and individual-level processes which have sometimes been left underspecified in the SIAH.…”