Associations among prosocial behavior, life satisfaction, and hedonic balance among young adults

The importance of prosocial behavior (PB; i.e., voluntary actions aimed to benefit others) on subjective well-being (SWB) has been studied in previous long-term longitudinal studies. Yet, the extent to which PB also matters for life satisfaction (LS) and hedonic balance (HB; i.e., higher positive affect over negative affect), the two components of SWB, during people’s everyday life has received less attention. In this study, we aimed to partly fill this gap by using data from Italian and Spanish young adults (18-35yrs) who were surveyed both daily (days=10; N=338) and weekly (Weeks=5; N=259). We used Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPMs) to explore daily and weekly relations among PB, LS, and HB. Regarding the association between PB and LS, daily results showed positive spill-over effects of PB on LS (within-level), indicating that people more prosocial than usual on a given day reported a peak in LS the subsequent day. However, spill-over associations did not emerge in the weekly dataset. Concerning the association between PB and HB, peaks of PB were positively associated with peaks of HB only on the same day (within-person correlations). Less robust associations emerged in the weekly dataset. Importantly, in both datasets, the within-level effects were found while controlling for unobserved stable, time-invariant confounders at the between-person level captured by the latent random intercept. Our findings add to the empirical literature on the effects of PB on SWB and highlight the potential role of PB as a protective factor for young adults’ well-being.