Groups or values? Testing the effectiveness of online social cure, group-affirmation, and self-affirmation manipulations on wellbeing outcomes

We tested the effectiveness of three brief, online manipulations theorised to have beneficial effects on wellbeing: a social cure manipulation priming important group memberships, a self-affirmation manipulation priming important values, and a group-affirmation manipulation priming values important to one's group. A control condition required respondents to reflect on films. Study 1 (N = 201) had no explicit stressor, whereas study 2 (N = 379) had an acute stressor immediately before the manipulations. The outcomes were a set of hedonic, evaluative, and eudaimonic wellbeing measures. With no acute stressor, all three manipulations boosted wellbeing perceptions, but in diverse ways. After a stressor, the social cure manipulation was the most frequent predictor. In all cases, main effects of the manipulations boosted wellbeing perceptions; however, where effects were moderated by baseline anxiety or stress induced by the stressor, the benefits were restricted to those lower in anxiety and stress. Overall, the results lend support to the idea that brief online manipulations, especially ones priming collective identities, can be beneficial for wellbeing. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.