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Journal of Happiness Studies

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15-06-2018 | Research Paper

Feel Good, Do Good Online? Spillover and Crossover Effects of Happiness on Adolescents’ Online Prosocial Behavior

Authors: Sara Erreygers, Heidi Vandebosch, Ivana Vranjes, Elfi Baillien, Hans De Witte

Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies | Issue 4/2019

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Abstract

Although the majority of research on adolescents’ online behavior has focused on antisocial behavior such as cyberbullying, adolescents more often behave prosocially than antisocially online. Research on offline prosocial behavior has shown that happiness and prosocial behavior are related. Furthermore, spillover-crossover research suggests that emotional states originating in one context can spill over to another context and can even cross over from one person to another. Therefore, this study examined whether happiness is also related to adolescents’ online prosocial behavior and whether others’ (in this case, parents’) happiness also indirectly, via transmission to adolescents’ own happiness, predicts adolescents’ online prosocial behavior. Via a daily diary method, the associations of adolescents’ own happiness and their parents’ happiness with adolescents’ online prosocial behavior were tested on a daily level. The findings suggest that, on a daily level, happiness creates a ripple effect whereby adolescents and parents take their positive emotional states from school and work home, and adolescents act on their happiness by behaving more prosocially online. The strongest spillover and crossover effects were found for girls and their mothers, evoking questions for future research to understand these gender differences.

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Throughout this text, the term online behavior is used to refer to any form of communicative behavior performed via linked digital devices such as computers or (smart)phones, and the applications associated with them (e.g. social networking sites, email, text messaging or calling).

This study was part of a larger diary research project on emotions and online behavior in families. As this study focused on adolescents’ online prosocial behavior, findings on parent outcome variables will be reported elsewhere (authors, manuscript in preparation).

Only the measures relevant for the current study are reported here.

We also estimated a mediation model with T2 OPB as mediator of the association between T1 happiness and T2 happiness. However, none of the indirect paths in this model were significant.

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Title: Feel Good, Do Good Online? Spillover and Crossover Effects of Happiness on Adolescents’ Online Prosocial Behavior
Authors: Sara Erreygers
Heidi Vandebosch
Ivana Vranjes
Elfi Baillien
Hans De Witte
Publication date: 15-06-2018
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies / Issue 4/2019
Print ISSN: 1389-4978
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7780
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-0003-2

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