How can we reach this experience of connectedness while reducing personal contacts with people, maybe due to working or schooling at home? A solution could be to nurture the
perceived satisfaction of the basic psychological needs as theorized by Self-Determination Theory (SDT: Deci & Ryan,
2017): Human beings can express their full potential (and experience well-being: Martela & Sheldon,
2019) as much as they feel satisfied rather than frustrated the three interrelated needs for relatedness/acceptance (feeling connected and supported), competence (experiencing to master tasks successfully) and autonomy (feeling a sense of direction, meaning, and choice).
Need satisfaction leads people to express high levels of well-being and also to face successfully life challenges (e.g., Tang et al.,
2020; Walker & Kono,
2018). Instead, need frustration leads to ill-being and maladaptive behaviors, thus resulting in reduced well-being (Church et al.,
2013) and motivation (Moè & Katz
2020,
2021). Therefore, how can we improve satisfaction and reduce the frustration of basic psychological needs?
Only rarely have personal resources and self-managed practices been considered as a way to increase the satisfaction of the needs. For example, Behzadnia and FatahModares (
2020) involved participants in a series of 10-day exercises grounded in SDT and confirmed that they were successful in increasing need satisfaction and reducing need frustration. In fact, what makes the difference is not the objective need satisfaction or frustration, but the
perceived satisfaction or frustration. From a practical point of view, this is an important issue, because during the isolation and physical distancing imposed to reduce the spread of COVID-19, there are more opportunities to engage in self-managed well-being practices than in need supportive social contexts.
1.1 The Well-Being Practices
Over the years, many well-being practices have been proposed to be enacted individually, based on anchoring techniques, that is, on sensing, remembering, and elaborating on meaningful episodes, such as satisfying relationships, achieved goals, and personal strengths. Anchoring with past successful and mastery experiences (that is, replicating/remembering positive sensations and images) rises well-being, as well as adopting the technique AIM, developed by Diener and Biswas-Diener (
2011), which implies the three steps of paying Attention (to positive episodes), giving a positive Interpretation (as satisfactory, successful, self-realizing), and Memorizing them (which means linking with the Self-representations and building a satisfactory view of ourselves).
Both anchoring and AIM techniques base their effectiveness on increased positive affect through upward spirals, following the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson & Branigan,
2005; Fredrickson & Joiner,
2002) and increased self-determination (Ryan & Deci,
2017), which previous research has shown to relate to well-being (e.g., Deci, & Ryan,
2008; Milyavskaya & Koestner,
2011) also during the Covid-19 outbreak (e.g., Šakan et al.,
2020).
Among the anchoring/recalling techniques proposed, given the objective to raise need satisfaction and curb need frustration, this study considered the following: gratitude list (Emmons & McCullough,
2003), self-affirmation (Fein & Spencer,
1997), goal setting (Locke & Latham,
1990) and three good things in life (Seligman et al.,
2005).
The gratitude list requires people to think about the situations in which they experienced gratitude and to report them by elaborating and savoring these experiences. It was first developed by Emmons and McCullough (
2003), and then successfully applied to a range of populations, such as college students (Işık & Ergüner-Tekinalp,
2017), adolescents (Froh et al.,
2008), teachers (Chan,
2010), the elderly (Killen & Macaskill,
2015) and prisoners (Deng et al.,
2018). Although the results overall demonstrated an increase in well-being indicators and a decrease in ill-being, independently of the gratitude target (Berger et al.,
2019), this was not always the case as outlined by Davis et al. (
2016) and Dickens (
2017), who suggest the need to consider some moderating factors, such as positive affect (see, e.g., Froh et al.,
2009; Wood et al.,
2010), and the practices in which the control group is involved.
Self-affirmation was first proposed by Fein and Spencer (
1997). It consists in making salient personal strengths or values, fields, and activities in which we typically succeed so that to increase the perception of competence and self-worth. It can be applied spontaneously (Emanuel et al.,
2018), and its effectiveness in increasing well-being has been demonstrated, for instance, by Armitage (
2016) and Nelson et al. (
2014), mainly for those participants low in baseline well-being (for a review, see Cohen & Sherman,
2014).
Goal setting was developed by Locke and Latham (
1990) and consists in setting relevant and achievable goals. Successful completion of personal goals should enhance need satisfaction, thus favoring well-being. A confirmation of this rationale comes from studies demonstrating that goal setting is related to well-being (see, e.g., Grégoire et al.,
2012; Dulagil et al.,
2016).
Thinking about meaningful things has been included as an active control condition, involved in doing something the experimenter can control. It is quite similar to the technique ‘three good things in life’ proposed by Seligman et al. (
2005), but the possibility of choosing to report negative meaningful episodes. Hence, depending on the content of the episodes reported, it is possible to predict either that this kind of recalling and elaborating would increase well-being or that it would not.
Considering the main goal of this study, the effectiveness of well-being practices based on the implementation of strengths through weekly exercises will be evaluated first on need satisfaction and frustration, predicting, respectively, an increase and a decrease for all groups. The gratitude list practice should mainly favor satisfaction and reduce frustration of the need for relatedness, since it refers to the experience of having received help from others. Self-affirmation practice should primarily increase satisfaction of the need for autonomy and reduce frustration of the same need, as it refers to the experience of self-management of personal strengths. Goal setting is expected to increase satisfaction and reduce frustration of the need for competence, since it refers to the fulfillment of personally endorsed goals. Since the three needs are interrelated, changes in overall need satisfaction and frustration are expected.
Then, other well-being aspects linked with need satisfaction/frustration are expected to increase and ill-being aspects to decrease. Previous research (Moè & Katz,
2020,
2021) found that need satisfaction is related to self-compassion (a kind, not judgmental attitude toward oneself: Neff,
2003a), and emotional reappraisal (an effective emotion regulation strategy: Gross,
2015), while need frustration is linked with self-derogation (a judgmental attitude, expression of poor self-compassion) and emotional suppression (an ineffective emotion regulation strategy). Therefore, it is predicted that these well-being practices will also increase self-compassion and emotional reappraisal and curb self-derogation and emotional suppression. Finally, a grateful disposition as an expression of well-being and openness (McCullough et al.,
2002) is also expected to increase.
1.2 Study Aims and Hypothesis
This study will address for the first time the effectiveness of online implemented well-being practices based on recalling and elaborating episodes of gratitude, self-affirmation, or goal setting during the Covid-19 outbreak. The first goal is to demonstrate that these practices will increase well-being and decrease ill-being. Specifically, an increase is predicted from the beginning to the end of the 7-week practice in need satisfaction, self-compassion, emotional reappraisal, and grateful disposition, and a decrease in need frustration, self-derogation, and emotional suppression. The second goal is to verify that the effects maintain over time and that participants are likely to continue with the practices.
The following hypotheses lead to the research.