Acute anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with higher levels of everyday altruism

Abstract

Prior laboratory research has suggested that humans may become more prosocial in stressful or threatening situations, but it is unknown whether the link between prosociality and defense generalizes to real-life. Here, we examined the association between defensive responses to a real-world threat (the COVID-19 pandemic) and everyday altruism. Four independent samples of 150 (N = 600) US residents were recruited online at 4 different timepoints, and self-report measures of perceived COVID-19 threat, defensive emotions (e.g., stress and anxiety), and everyday altruism were collected. Our operationalization of defensive emotions was inspired by the threat imminence framework, an ecological model of how humans and animals respond to varying levels of threat. We found that perceived COVID-19 threat was associated with higher levels of everyday altruism (assessed by the Self-report Altruism scale). Importantly, there was a robust association between experiencing acute anxiety and high physiological arousal during the pandemic (responses typically characteristic of higher perceived threat imminence), and propensity to engage in everyday altruism. Non-significant or negative associations were found with less acute defensive responses like stress. These findings support a real-life relation between defensive and altruistic motivation in humans, which may be modulated by perceived threat imminence.

Figure 1

Total number of confirmed cases averaged across states, over the 4 weeks of data collection (top left); Perceived COVID-19 threat over the 4 weeks of data collection (top right ); Everyday altruism over the 4 weeks of data collection (SRA total and donations only score, bottom panel). The dashed line connects the mean across samples (i.e. weeks). Note that the distributions shown here correspond to independent samples collected on each week.

Figure 2

(A) Beta values and SEs for Model 1. (B) Beta values and SEs for Model 2. Dependent variable in both models is everyday altruism (SRA).

Figure 3

Model 2 predictions of everyday altruism (SRA) as a function of Anxiety (top left), Perceived COVID-19 threat (top right), Age (bottom left) and Stress (bottom right), depicting estimated random slopes per week.

Figure 4

Zero-order correlations between indices of prosocial behaviour and defensive responses. The numbers in each cell correspond to the Pearson r coefficients. Cells with a white background correspond to correlations that did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Covid19_th: Perceived COVID-19 threat; PSS: Perceived Stress Scale; Depression: DASS-21 Depression scale; Stress: DASS-21 Stress scale; Anxiety: DASS-21 Anxiety scale; SRA: Self-report Altruism; PBI: Prosocial Behavioural Intentions scale; stranger: Frequency of altruistic acts towards stranger; friend: Frequency of altruistic acts towards a friend; relative: Frequency of altruistic acts towards a relative; ingroup: Frequency of altruistic acts towards an ingroup member; outgroup: Frequency of altruistic acts towards an outgroup member; acquaint: Frequency of altruistic acts towards an acquaintance.

Figure 5

Demographic information for the sample collected in each week.