The expected positive relationships were found among positive affect, prosociality, and well-being, as well as negative relationships of these three variables with collective disempowerment, negative affect, and financial strain.

To summarize the key findings of the three identified pathways to prosociality, Table 1 presents how positive and negative affect, along with financial strain, influence well-being and, in turn, prosocial behavior. The table also shows how collective disempowerment moderates these effects.

Table 1 Table 1 Summary of Pathways to Prosociality

Table 1 provides an overview of the key findings regarding the three pathways to prosociality identified in this study. As shown, positive affect follows a broaden-and-build pathway, where higher well-being leads to greater prosocial behavior. Conversely, negative affect and financial strain are associated with lower well-being, resulting in decreased prosociality through the incapacity pathway. However, negative affect can also drive prosocial behavior through a compensation pathway, particularly when well-being is controlled. The role of collective disempowerment as a moderating factor further emphasizes the complexity of these relationships, as it strengthens or weakens the effects of affect and financial strain on prosociality. In the following sections, we delve into the detailed statistical analysis, which confirms these patterns across individual and country-level data. Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics for the pooled sample (see Tables 1 and 2 in the Supplemental Material for results for each country).

Table 2 Table 2 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations for the pooled sample Note.

M: mean; SD: standard deviation; α: ordinal alpha; † two item polychoric correlation; ^* p < 0.01. Range: Prosocial Behavior [1,7]; Well-being [1,11]; Collective Disempowerment [1,5]; Positive Affect [1,5]; Negative Affect [1,5]; Perceived Financial Strain [1,5].

Individual and country level coefficients are presented in Tables 3 and 4 ⁱⁱⁱ and semi-partial correlations are reported as index of effect-size (Funder & Ozer, 2019).

For the purposes of this paper, the focal results (using alpha < 0.01) are the following: At the individual level, all three of the pathways (indirect effects) were supported. Consistent with past research, positive affect was associated with higher prosociality via higher well-being (the “broaden and build” pathway), whereas negative affect and financial strain were associated with lower pro-sociality via lower well-being (the incapacity pathway). In addition, controlling for well-being, negative affect was associated with higher prosociality (the compensation pathway). Financial strain did not have a significant direct effect on prosociality. With regards to moderation, at the individual level, disempowerment moderated two of the focal pathways: from positive affect to well-being, and from well-being to prosociality.

According to the benchmarks proposed by Funder and Ozer (2019) for the interpretation of correlations, the observed effect sizes are between small and medium as they relate to the explanation of single events, but potentially consequential in the medium term.

Table 3 Table 3 Individual- and country-level predictors of well-being: positive and negative affect, perceived financial strain, and collective disempowerment Note.

β: Unstandardized regression coefficients; sr: Semipartial correlation; (GC): Within-Country Group-Centered; (CM): Country Mean.

Table 4 Table 4 Individual- and country-level predictors of prosociality: positive and negative affect, perceived financial strain, well-being and collective disempowerment Note.

β: Unstandardized regression coefficients; sr: Semipartial correlation; (GC): Within-Country Group-Centered; (CM): Country Mean.

Disempowerment moderated the strength of the indirect effects (Table 5): Higher disempowerment (compared to lower) is associated with a slightly stronger relationship between positive affect and prosociality via well-being, and a slightly weaker incapacity pathway for negative affect. Disempowerment did not moderate the indirect effect of financial strain.

Table 5 Table 5 Conditional within-country indirect effects Note.

Values represent the lower and upper confidence intervals of the indirect effect (Yzerbyt et al., 2018).

The interaction patterns for disempowerment are illustrated in Figure 2; simple slopes for all significant interactions are reported in Table 6. Notably, higher disempowerment is associated with a stronger relationship between affect and well-being. Controlling for well-being, disempowerment exacerbates the compensation pathway of negative affect to prosociality, and attenuates the effect of well-being on prosociality.

Figure 2.

Note. Panel A: positive affect x disempowerment on well-being; Panel B: financial strain x disempowerment on well-being; Panel C: positive affect x disempowerment on prosociality; Panel D: negative affect x disempowerment on prosociality; Panel E: well-being x disempowerment on prosociality.

In this large-scale cross-country study of prosocial behaviors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we tested three pathways to prosociality: The “broaden and build” (positive affect), compensation (negative affect), and incapacity (financial strain and negative affect) pathways. At the individual level, positive affect was associated with prosociality via higher well-being (Fredrickson, 2016; Snippe et al., 2018) and negative affect was associated with lower prosociality via lower well-being (Thoits & Hewitt, 2001). A compensation pathway was also observed: Controlling for well-being, negative affect was associated with higher prosociality (Surana & Lomas, 2014). To our knowledge, these effects have not been tested jointly, and it is both theoretically and socially important to observe that each holds independently and at scale. The lack of support for a compensation effect of financial strain on prosociality differs from past findings (e.g., Piff et al., 2010), suggesting the possibility of unmeasured moderators to be explored in future research.

Regarding the role of collective disempowerment, there were direct negative associations between disempowerment and prosociality and well-being (Brittian et al., 2013; Smart-Richman & Leary, 2009). It is a novel finding to show that controlling for affective effects, disempowerment seems to harm individuals and damage the social fabric in a time of crisis (Leander et al., 2020).

Although disempowerment predicted lower prosociality overall, disempowerment nevertheless moderated the strength of the prosociality pathways at these lower levels: Higher disempowerment strengthened the “broaden and build” positive impact of positive affect on prosociality via well-being, and buffered the negative affect incapacity pathway. More specifically, we observed that at higher levels of disempowerment, the impact of affect on well-being is stronger, and the compensation pathway from negative affect to prosociality, when controlling for well-being, is also stronger. Disempowered individuals were the least prosocial when they felt low positive or negative affect. Although the present research does not speak directly to the underlying processes, future research can test theoretically-relevant contenders such as responsiveness to internal states (Cialdini & Kenrick, 1976), identity threat (Dovidio et al., 2010), and psychological need deprivation (e.g., Fritsche, et al. 2017; Leander et al., 2019).

It should also be noted that the three pathways tested here are theorized at the individual level, as psychological processes, and were not observed at the country level. At the country-level of analysis, we observed a positive association between positive affect, well-being and prosociality, and a negative association between disempowerment and prosocial behavior, controlling for well-being. These results are of concern, as they suggest that precisely in the contexts in which prosocial behavior would be most necessary to face a disaster—such as among social groups with reduced well-being and greater disempowerment, it may be less likely. The possible associated cultural, political, and group processes would make for interesting future investigation.

A limitation of the current research is that, due to the cross-sectional design, we cannot be certain about the direction of causality. There is evidence for a bidirectional relationship between well-being and prosocial behavior, both in everyday life (Snippe et al., 2018), in work contexts (Conway et al., 2009), and in primary school children (Chen et al., 2020). More longitudinal or experimental studies to investigate this would prove valuable in the future. However, the present approach highlights three possible levers for policy level efforts to increase prosocial behavior during disasters: generate positive affect. For example, through ceremonies of gratitude for first responders, (Glasgow et al., 2016); mitigate financial strain, for example, through the public welfare systems (Yur'yev et al., 2012); and channel the collective experience of negative affect to compensatory action (for example, emphasizing the self-affirming functions of prosociality in media releases or public statements to the nation).

Another limitation of this work is the measurement of prosociality. Firstly, the measure is specific to the COVID-19 pandemic context, so the results may not be generalizable to other contexts. Secondly, the measure captures self-reported willingness and not actual behavior. Thirdly, the items do not distinguish between helping members of one’s own group and helping society in general. Past research suggests that disempowerment increases the willingness to help one’s own group (Leander et al., 2020), and more broadly, that group norms create and strengthen the association between affect and particular targets (Louis et al., 2019). Since the measure of collective disempowerment used "people like me" as the reference group, the possibility that participants had different groups in mind could suggest additional moderators to explore in future research. It would also be useful in the future to test the role of specific emotions associated with doing good, such as guilt and hope (Cohen-Chen et al., 2020).

Mention also needs to be made that in absolute terms, most of the observed effect sizes are small; nevertheless, it has been argued that in psychological research, small effects are not only typical but also meaningful, especially when aggregated across individuals (Funder & Ozer, 2019; Gignac & Szodorai, 2016). With larger samples, smaller effect sizes are also more likely to have been estimated correctly (Funder & Ozer, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic affects almost every human on this planet; hence, small effects affecting almost 7.8 billion humans are arguably meaningful.

In conclusion, this study of over fifty thousand respondents across 39 countries suggests three paths to prosociality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: broaden and build, incapacity, and compensation. Each pathway operates independently at the individual level, when other pathways are controlled. In addition, a higher degree of disempowerment is found to exacerbate the “broaden and build” and compensation pathways, and to attenuate the incapacity pathway. From a theoretical and applied perspective, examining mechanisms and directions of causality – both longitudinally and in response to strategically targeted interventions – emerge as critical directions of future research in this field.