A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Suzanne van de Groep; Kiki Zanolie; Kayla H Green; Sophie W Sweijen; Eveline A Crone

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240349

. 2020 Oct 7;15(10):e0240349. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Suzanne van de Groep ^1,^2,^*, Kiki Zanolie ^2,³, Kayla H Green ^1,², Sophie W Sweijen ^1,², Eveline A Crone ^1,²

Editor: Valerio Capraro⁴

PMCID: PMC7540854 PMID: 33027308

Abstract

Adolescence is a formative phase for social development. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated regulations have led to many changes in adolescents’ lives, including limited opportunities for social interactions. The current exploratory study investigated the effect of the first weeks of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on Dutch adolescents’ (N = 53 with attrition, N = 36 without attrition) mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior. Longitudinal analyses comparing pre-pandemic measures to a three-week peri-pandemic daily diary study showed (i) decreases in empathic concern, opportunities for prosocial actions, and tension, (ii) stable levels of social value orientation, altruism, and dire prosociality, and (iii) increased levels of perspective-taking and vigor during the first weeks of lockdown. Second, this study investigated peri-pandemic effects of familiarity, need, and deservedness on giving behavior. To this end, we utilized novel hypothetical Dictator Games with ecologically valid targets associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescents showed higher levels of giving to a friend (a familiar other, about 51% of the total share), a doctor in a hospital (deserving target, 78%), and individuals with COVID-19 or a poor immune system (targets in need, 69 and 63%, respectively) compared to an unfamiliar peer (39%) This suggests that during the pandemic need and deservedness had a greater influence on adolescent giving than familiarity. Overall, this study demonstrates detrimental effects of the first weeks of lockdown on adolescents’ empathic concern and opportunities for prosocial actions, which are important predictors of healthy socio-emotional development. However, adolescents also showed marked resilience and a willingness to benefit others as a result of the lockdown, as evidenced by improved perspective-taking and mood, and high sensitivity to need and deservedness in giving to others.

Introduction

Adolescence, the age period of approximately 10–24 years, is a transition phase for socio-emotional development in which adolescents learn to autonomously navigate their social worlds [1]. Adolescence is marked by heightened emotional reactivity and a reorientation to peers [1–3] such that the social world and interactions with people outside the household become increasingly important [1, 2]. Not only do adolescents start spending more time with peers compared to children, they also are more sensitive to peer influence and attach more value to peer approval, acceptance, and rejection [2–4]. Simultaneously, cognitive processes, such as perspective-taking and thinking about oneself in relation to others, improve. Perspective-taking enables adolescents to show other-oriented, prosocial behaviors (i.e., behaviors that benefit others) and to build strong, reciprocal relationships with others [1, 2, 4–6]. Improvements in social perspective-taking help adolescents grow into contributing members of society that have secure relationships with others [7, 8]. As such, opportunities to empathize, socialize, and benefit others are paramount for healthy adolescent development [1, 2, 8].

Pre- to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 represents a massive and challenging global health crisis [9]. Without a vaccine, most governments have authorized containment measures, such as social distancing, to slow the pandemic [9]. However, distancing conflicts with the human tendency to connect with others and severely limits opportunities to have contact with people outside one’s household. The need to connect with others is especially pronounced in adolescence [1, 2, 9]. In the Netherlands, social distancing and a lockdown were implemented on March 15, 2020, and schools were closed on March 17, 2020. This led to an enormous change in adolescents’ social environment, with them fully transitioning to online home-education, having no physical contact with peers and friends, and being constrained to stay mostly at home. Concerns have been raised about how feelings of social isolation and loneliness will affect adolescents’ mental health and socio-emotional development [2, 9]. For example, animal research has shown detrimental effects of social deprivation and isolation [2, 10, 11]. Besides social distancing, the pandemic has resulted in many other changes for adolescents, including possible worry about health of family members, fear of death, financial consequences, and worry about one’s future [9, 12]. Therefore, social changes in the pandemic should be interpreted in the context of multiple system disruptions [13]. To date, very little is known about how the COVID-19 pandemic affects adolescents and their social behavior. Therefore, the first part of the current study was dedicated to investigating changes in Dutch adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behaviors when comparing pre-pandemic measures to measures obtained in the first weeks of lockdown.

Peri-pandemic giving to others

Adolescence is a crucial turning point for the development of other- and society-oriented, prosocial behaviors [6, 8]. Showing prosocial behaviors fulfills adolescents’ need for autonomy, respect, and impact [14], and helps them to attain the fundamental developmental task of fitting in and being a contributing member of society [7, 8]. Giving is a form of prosocial behavior that is important for building and maintaining strong relationships [5, 15]. Dictator Games, in which individuals divide valuable resources with a second person [16], are often used to study giving, showing that individuals typically give away 20–30% of their resources [5, 17], even when the identity of the receiver (i.e., target) remains unknown and without future transactions. So far, most studies have focused on giving to unfamiliar others, but adolescents generally give more to close, relational others, such as friends and classmates [5, 15, 18]. Additionally, adults studies show increased levels of giving to those who are in need or deserving [7, 19, 20], although familiarity, need, and deservedness are no prerequisites for giving [7]. Relational giving and giving to those who are in need or deserving are nonetheless important to study, as they may be more prevalent in adolescents’ lives than giving to unfamiliar, anonymous others [5]. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a particularly interesting and unique context to extend our knowledge about adolescents’ giving to various targets, which so far has mainly focused on peers [5, 14, 17]. Specifically, COVID-19 introduces ecologically valid targets that are in need or deserving. These targets of interest include individuals with a poor immune system or COVID-19 symptoms (i.e., targets in need) and medical personnel, such as doctors working in hospitals (i.e., deserving targets). We compared giving to these three targets with giving to an unfamiliar peer (i.e., the default option in most economic games) and a friend (i.e., a target that is more familiar and similar). The reason to examine giving towards targets with verifying degrees of familiarity, similarity, and need and deservedness within individuals was to get more insight in the mechanisms and motivations underlying giving decisions. Consequently, the second part of the current study was dedicated to investigating adolescents’ peri-pandemic giving towards the following targets in hypothetical Dictator Games: an unfamiliar peer, friend, individual with a poor immune system, individual with COVID-19, and doctor working at a hospital. We also examined whether giving changed as a result being in lockdown for several weeks.

The current study

In the current exploratory study, we investigated the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdown and social distancing regulations on Dutch adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior. Secondly, we investigated giving towards targets that play an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of familiarity, need, and deservedness, and whether this changed during the lockdown. We focused on adolescents aged 10–20 years, given that this is a crucial developmental phase for social behavior. Adolescents who already participated in a cohort-sequential longitudinal study prior to the pandemic were invited to participate in the current daily diary study. Participants reported on their experiences and behaviors on weekdays during the lockdown, from March 30 until April 17, 2020. Adolescents reported on their levels of empathy (i.e., perspective-taking and empathic concern), mood (i.e., vigor and tension) and prosocial behaviors (i.e., general contributions to society, opportunities for prosocial actions, social value orientation, altruism, and dire prosociality) prior to and peri-pandemic. Furthermore, at the start and end of the daily diary study, participants played single-shot Dictator Games in which they divided 10 coins between themselves and the following targets: an unfamiliar peer, friend, individual with poor immune system, individual with COVID-19, and a doctor working in a hospital.

Method

Participants

The current study was part of a larger longitudinal study on prosocial development in adolescence called ‘Brainlinks’. In this cohort-sequential longitudinal study conducted in the Netherlands, adolescents are being followed over the course of several years to investigate the neural development of prosocial behavior, see Fig 1. At the first measurement wave (i.e., T1, May–October 2018) 142 adolescents participated, 127 of whom also participated in the second wave (i.e., T2, August 2019 –January 2020). In between these waves, all participants were asked to report on their mood and prosocial experiences every two months, (i.e., T1.5). At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, all 142 original participants were contacted to participate in a daily diary study which focused on adolescents’ peri-pandemic prosocial experiences and behavior. A total of 53 adolescents participated, 42 (79.2%) of whom were female, and 11 (20.8%) were male. Participants were between 10–20 years of age on the first day of the daily diary study (i.e., March 30, 2020), M_age = 16.56, SD = 2.67, see S1 Fig. This study was approved by the METC Leiden-Den Haag-Delft (Leiden); number NL62878.058.17 and the Psychology Research Ethics committee of Universiteit Leiden, Name and Number: 'Prosocial behavior in adolescence during the pandemic Covid-19 crisis' (2020-03-25-Crone, prof.dr. E.A.M.-V2-2317). Adolescents and their parents (for participants younger than 16 years) provided written informed consent. Participants received €1 for each completed questionnaire and €2 for the last questionnaire. Additionally, to increase the response rate for the final questionnaire, a €50 gift card was allotted amongst the participants who completed this questionnaire.

Fig 1 — The current study focuses on comparing pre- (i.e., T1, T1.5, and T2) to peri-COVID-19-pandemic behavior, as well as understanding adolescents peri-pandemic giving behavior.

Procedure

Daily diary study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic

Data were collected through online questionnaires in Qualtrics. Data collection started on March 30, 2020 (i.e., two weeks after the schools were closed in the Netherlands), and was completed on April 17, 2020. During these three consecutive weeks participants received an invitation by e-mail from Mondays to Fridays, to complete a set of questionnaires. Each questionnaire included daily measures (e.g. assessing mood and daily prosocial experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; duration five minutes). Furthermore, on day 1, 5, 10, and 15, weekly measures were also collected (e.g. empathy, general contributions to society; duration five minutes). Finally, a few extra measures were collected only at the start (day 1) and end of the study (day 15; i.e., assessing giving behavior, social value orientation, and risk-taking behavior; duration five minutes). Therefore, the total duration of the set of questionnaires was 15 minutes on day 1 and 15, 10 minutes on day 5 and 10, and 5 minutes on all other days.

All questionnaires were sent out at 10:00 AM and participants were asked to complete the questionnaire that same day. Participants were instructed not to discuss the questionnaires with others and to always select the answer that described them best. The following inclusion criteria were used for the daily measures: (1) questionnaires had to be completed within 36 hours after being sent, (2), a response should not be a duplicate (i.e., a double response on the same questionnaire by one individual). In the case of duplicate responses where one was incomplete, the incomplete response was removed. In case of duplicates where the second response was obtained one day after the other, this response was moved to the correct day. The number of valid responses for all obtained measures can be seen in Table 1. As this number differs between time points and measures, the number of participants will be reported for all analyses.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of giving, empathy (i.e., perspective-taking and empathic concern), general contributions to society, opportunities for prosocial actions,, mood (i.e., vigor and tension), altruistic and dire prosociality, and social value orientation prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Measure	No. of items	Min. Score	Max. Score	Mean Score (SD)	Skewness	Kurtosis
Donated Coins Daily Diaries Day 1 (N = 53)
Unfamiliar Peer	1	0	6	3.91 (1.62)	-1.42	1.00
Friend	1	3	10	5.11 (.89)	3.16	17.74
Individual with poor immune system	1	4	10	6.25 (1.54)	-.25	-.54
Individual with COVID-19	1	3	10	6.89 (1.86)	.51	-.61
Doctor working at a hospital	1	3	10	7.79 (1.78)	1.04	.67
Donated Coins Daily Diaries Day 15 (N = 36)
Unfamiliar Peer	1	0	6	4.25 (1.27)	-1.56	2.29
Friend	1	4	10	5.31 (1.06)	3.10	11.36
Individual with poor immune system	1	3	10	5.67 (1.53)	.17	-1.18
Individual with COVID-19	1	1	10	6.25 (1.95)	-.23	1.02
Doctor working at a hospital	1	4	10	7.44 (1.84)	.55	.64
Empathy: Perspective-taking
T1 (N = 51)	6	1.17	3.50	2.51 (.60)	-.45	-.66
T2 (N = 53)	6	1.00	3.83	2.58 (.58)	-.25	.95
Daily diaries (average day 1, 5, 10, 15; N = 53)	6	1.04	3.94	2.75 (.62)	-.47	.33
Empathy: Empathic Concern
T1 (N = 51)	6	1.33	3.83	2.68 (.59)	.07	-.62
T2 (N = 53)	6	1.00	4.00	2.63 (.66)	-.00	-.13
Daily diaries (average day 1, 5, 10, 15; N = 53)	6	1.13	3.04	2.32 (.42)	-.58	-.04
General Contributions to Society T2 (N = 53)
T2 (N = 53)	3	3.67	10.00	7.18 (1.16)	-.40	.78
Daily diaries (average day 1, 5, 10, 15; N = 53)	3	3.50	9.42	7.25 (1.14)	-.65	1.09
Opportunities for prosocial actions
T1 (N = 51)	3	1.00	5.67	3.55 (1.43)	-.33	-.10
T1.5 (N = 51)	3	1.17	5.92	3.75 (1.05)	-.21	-.22
T2 (N = 53)	3	1.00	6.00	3.94 (1.18)	-.53	-.04
Week 1 (N = 52)	3	1.00	5.00	3.03 (1.20)	-.08	-1.04
Week 2 (N = 39)	3	1.00	5.33	2.80 (1.32)	.27	-.99
Week 3 (N = 40)	3	1.00	5.80	2.96 (1.22)	.10	-.36
Mood: Vigor
T1.5 (N = 43)	5	1.58	3.67	2.75 (.49)	-.43	.22
Week 1 (N = 52)	5	1.44	4.60	3.12 (.81)	-.18	-.56
Week 2 (N = 39)	5	1.64	5.00	3.33 (.81)	-.09	-.10
Week 3 (N = 40)	5	1.40	5.00	3.25 (.90)	-.13	-.16
Mood: Tension
T1.5 (N = 43)	6	1.00	4.33	2.15 (.85)	.58	-.52
Week 1 (N = 52)	6	1.00	4.11	1.77 (.76)	1.15	.80
Week 2 (N = 39)	6	1.00	2.67	1.45 (.46)	1.20	.80
Week 3 (N = 40)	6	1.00	3.44	1.65 (.67)	1.04	.36
Dire prosociality
T1 (N = 52)	3	2.67	5.00	3.84 (.70)	.047	-.79
T2 (N = 51)	3	2.00	5.00	3.77 (.83)	-.46	-.43
Week 1 (N = 52)	3	1.56	5.00	3.81 (.81)	-.49	-.13
Week 2 (N = 39)	3	1.67	5.00	3.70 (.90)	-.36	-.51
Week 3 (N = 40)	3	1.42	5.00	3.67 (.89)	-.68	.40
Altruistic prosociality
T1 (N = 52)	6	1.83	5.00	4.28 (.59)	-1.84	4.98
T2 (N = 51)	6	2.00	5.00	4.25 (.52)	-1.54	5.45
Week 1 (N = 52)	6	2.50	5.00	4.11 (.65)	-.79	.04
Week 2 (N = 39)	6	2.63	5.00	4.17 (.63)	-.70	.00
Week 3 (N = 40)	6	2.67	5.00	4.19 (.66)	-.89	-.08
Social Value Orientation (SVO)
T1	6	14.74	45.00	34.05 (7.30)	-.80	.52
T2	6	7.82	61.39	35.50 (7.91)	-.09	3.91
Day 1 daily diary study	6	7.82	53.37	35.12 (7.43)	-.68	2.94
Day 15 daily diary study	6	16.14	45.89	35.79 (6.80)	-.93	1.43

Open in a new tab

Note: Minimum and maximum scores represent the actual (i.e., not possible) scores that were made by participants.

Questionnaire data obtained before the COVID-19 pandemic

At T1 (i.e., May–October 2018), T1.5 (between T1 and T2), and T2 (August 2019—January 2020), prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we measured empathy (i.e., perspective-taking and emphatic concern), general contributions to society, opportunities for prosocial actions, dire and altruistic prosociality, SVO, and mood (i.e., vigor and tension), see Fig 1 and Table 1. Specifically, empathy, altruistic and dire prosociality, and SVO were measured at T1 (N = 51) and T2 (N = 53), general contributions to society at T2, (N = 52), opportunities for prosocial actions at T1 (N = 51), T1.5 (N = 51), and T2 (N = 53), and mood at T1.5 (N = 43).

There is an Open Science Framework (OSF) entry for the daily diary study (https://osf.io/kgcdm/) including a detailed description of all obtained measures and this study’s ethics protocol. In the current study, we deviated from some of the original questions described on the OSF because the sample size of this study was relatively small. We therefore only described main time effects, and targets and time effects on Dictator Game giving. The hypotheses related to individual differences trajectories should be examined in separate studies with larger sample sizes.

Materials

1. Pre-to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

Empathy: Empathic concern and perspective-taking. We measured two components of empathy, perspective-taking and empathic concern, using the respective subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; [21]). The perspective-taking subscale included six items (Cronbach’s α_day1 = .79) measuring the inclination to spontaneously adopt the psychological viewpoint of others. A typical item from this scale is “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective”. The empathic concern subscale included six items (Cronbach’s α_day1 = .75) measuring the tendency to experience feelings of warmth, compassion, and concern for other people. A typical item from this scale is “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”. Items were rated using a 5‐point Likert scale from 0 (does not at all apply to me) to 4 (completely applies to me). For each subscale, the mean of the six items was computed for analyses. The IRI was administered on T1, T2, and day 1, 5, 10, and 15. To increase reliability and as perspective-taking and empathic concern were expected to provide a personality index, scores on the subscales were averaged over the four daily diary measurements (Becht et al., 2017). As a result, three scores were used for perspective-taking and empathic concern, reflecting T1, T2, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

General contribution to society. To measure individual differences in perceived contributions to society, we created a new three-item questionnaire called ‘General Contribution to Society’ (GCS; Cronbach’s α_day1 = .64). Participants rated on a 10-point scale whether three statements applied to them, with 1 meaning ‘not at all’ and 10 meaning ‘very much’. Before answering the statements, it was explained to participants that contributions to society can take many different forms, e.g. through work, volunteering, or social contacts. The statements were “I think it is important to contribute to society”, “I think my volunteering is important”, and “I think it is important to make an effort for the people around me”. A mean GCS-score was computed by averaging over the three items. Participants were given the option to respond to each of the statements with ‘Not applicable’, in which case their response was recorded as ‘missing’ and not used in the mean score computation. The GCS was administered on T2 and day 1, 5, 10, and 15 of the daily diary study. To increase reliability, the GCS-score was averaged over the four daily diaries measurements. As a result, there were two scores for GCS, reflecting T2 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Opportunities for prosocial actions: Emotional support. To measure opportunities for prosocial actions (specifically towards friends), we adapted three questions of the ‘Opportunities for Prosocial Actions Scale’ [22]. Participants rated on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 6 (very much) whether the following three statements applied to them: ‘I comforted a friend last day’, ‘Last day, I did my best to carve out time for friends’, and ‘Last day, I sent a message to a friend’, Cronbach’s α_day1 = .66. The questionnaire was administered on all 15 days of the daily diary study, and in adjusted form on T1, T1.5, T2 (i.e., enquiring the frequency of these actions in the past months, on a scale of 1 (not something I do) to 6 (very often). A mean score for each assessment was computed by averaging over the three items. To increase reliability, scores were averaged per week of the daily diary study and for the five questionnaires obtained at T1.5. As a result, we used six scores for opportunities for prosocial actions, reflecting T1, T1.5, T2, and week 1, 2, and 3 of the daily diary study. A within-person standard deviation was calculated for week 1, 2, and 3 to assess variability in opportunities for prosocial actions during the pandemic (Becht et al., 2017).

Mood: Vigor and tension. To measure mean levels and fluctuations in vigor and tension, we used the Profiles of Mood States (POMS; [23]). Although the original questionnaire includes more emotions than vigor and tension, these were not measured during the daily diary study (i.e., at T1.5 we did include all emotions as measured by the POMS). We decided to focus only on vigor and tension subscales in the daily diary study to shorten this study’s length and minimize pressure for participants. We included a positive emotion (vigor) to get an indication of adolescent resiliency, and a negative emotion (tension) as prior studies have suggested increases in adolescent tension and anxiety as a result of the pandemic [2]. Participants rated the extent to which items represented their mood at that moment, using a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very well). Scores were calculated by averaging the items for the vigor (5 items; Cronbach’s α_day1 = .71, example item ‘active’) and tension subscales (6 items; Cronbach’s α_day1 = .90, example item ‘anxious’). The POMS was administered on T1.5 and all 15 days of the daily diary study. To increase reliability, the mood and vigor scores were averaged for the five questionnaires obtained at T1.5 and per week of the daily diary study. As a result, we used four mean level scores for vigor and tensions, reflecting T1.5, and week 1, 2, and 3 of the daily diary study. Within-person standard deviations were calculated for week 1, 2, and 3 to assess variability in vigor and tension during the pandemic.

Prosocial tendencies measure revised: Dire and altruistic prosociality. To measure dire and altruistic prosociality, we used the dire and altruistic subscales of the Prosocial Tendencies Measure Revised (PTM-R; [24]). Dire prosociality refers to helping others in crisis or emergency situations (3 items, Cronbach’s α_day1 = .83, example item: I tend to help people who are in real crisis or need), whereas altruistic prosociality (6 items, Cronbach’s α_day1 = .80, example item: I often help even if I don’t think I will get anything out of helping) refers to helping others when there is little or no perceived potential for a direct, explicit reward to the self [24]. Participant rated the extent to which statements applied to them, using a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very well). Scores were calculated by averaging the items for each subscale, after recoding 5 items on which higher scores reflected less altruistic prosociality. The PTM-R subscales were assessed at T1, T2, and all days of the pandemic daily diary study. To increase reliability, dire and altruistic prosociality scores were averaged per week of the daily diary study. As a result, we used five mean level scores for dire and altruistic prosociality, reflecting T1, T2, and week 1, 2, and 3 of the daily diary study. A within-person standard deviation was calculated for week 1, 2, and 3 to assess variability in dire and altruistic prosociality during the pandemic.

Social value orientation: Slider. To measure the magnitude of the concern that adolescents have for others, we used the Social Value Orientation (SVO) slider measure, which yields a continuous, non-categorical SVO score [25]. This score is based on six primary SVO slider items and represents the balance between allocations for oneself and others. For each question, adolescents had to decide between nine different outcome allocations for themselves and unfamiliar others, with differing levels of self-gain and other-gain. Higher scores indicate greater prosocial value orientation, with scores greater than 57.15 reflecting an altruistic SVO, scores between 22.45–57.15 reflecting a prosocial SVO, scores between -12.04 and 22.45 reflecting an individualistic SVO, and scores below -12.04 reflecting a competitive SVO. Prior studies have presented evidence for the validity and reliability of the measurement [25].

2. Peri-pandemic familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on giving

Giving to different targets: Dictator Games. Giving behavior was measured on day 1 and day 15 with a novel Dictator Game [5, 16] developed for the purpose of this study, with five trials presented in randomized order. On each trial, participants divided 10 coins between themselves and one of five targets: an unfamiliar peer, a friend, an individual with a poor immune system, an individual with COVID-19, and a doctor working at a hospital. The exact identity of the target remained unknown to participants, they only knew on each trial whether the target was an unfamiliar peer, a friend, etc. Giving behavior was operationalized as the number of donated coins, ensuing in a discrete value between 0 and 10 for each target. The target could not decline the offer or influence it in any way [5]. Participants were instructed to treat the coins as valuable for oneself and the target, and that keeping more coins for oneself would result in fewer coins for the target. To minimize experimenter demand effects, it was emphasized that there were no right or wrong answers, and each trial (i.e., the donation to each target) was shown on a separate screen. Participants were explained that divisions were hypothetical and that there was no actual payment.

Results

See Table 1 for descriptive statistics and psychometric properties of all measures. Details on how statistical analyses were performed, including data checks, can be found in S1 File. We performed a few descriptive analyses on measures of which we had no pre-pandemic measurements that are beyond the scope of this article. For completeness, these are reported in S2 File, and all measures obtained during the pandemic are described on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kgcdm/). Histograms of all key variables are displayed in S3 File. An overview and copies of all developed and used questionnaires in English and Dutch can be found in S4 and S5 Files.

1. Pre-to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

To examine whether participants had similar levels of empathy (i.e. perspective-taking and empathic concern), general contributions to society, opportunities for prosocial actions, mood (i.e., vigor and tension), dire and altruistic prosociality, and SVO prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Generalized Estimated Equations (GEE) models were performed separately for each variable. GEE models are suitable for longitudinal analyses in small samples as this technique does not apply listwise deletion, estimates robust standard errors, and can accommodate alternative correlation structures (e.g., residual dependency) that are common in repeated measures studies [26]. For perspective-taking an unstructured correlation matrix (i.e., freely estimated correlation matrix) had the best fit (see S6 File; [26]). The Wald Chi-Square test indicated a main effect of time, X² (2, N = 53) = 12.95, p = .002. Pairwise comparisons with sequential Bonferroni corrections showed that adolescents displayed significantly higher levels of perspective-taking during the COVID-19 pandemic (M = 2.74, SE = .08), compared to T1 (M = 2.51, SE = .08, p = .002) and T2 (M = 2.58, SE = .08, p = .012), see Fig 2. For empathic concern a autoregressive correlation matrix had the best fit, see S6 File. The analysis showed a main effect of time, X² (2, N = 53) = 34.08, p < .001. Pairwise comparisons with sequential Bonferroni corrections showed that adolescents showed significantly lower levels of empathic concern during the COVID-19 pandemic (M = 2.31, SE = .06), compared to T1 (M = 2.68, SE = .08, p < .001) and T2 (M = 2.64, SE = .09), see Fig 2. No time effect was found for general contributions to society, p = .704.

Fig 2 — Adolescents showed higher levels of perspective-taking but lower levels of empathic concern during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to before. Results are displayed separately for the sample without attrition (i.e., consisting of individuals who show no attrition over time, N = 36) and the sample with attrition (i.e., consisting of all available data per time point, regardless of whether participants showed attrition, N = 36 to 53).

For mean levels of opportunities for prosocial actions an independent correlation structure had the best fit, see S6 File. The analysis showed a main effect of time, X² (5, N = 53) = 39.27, p < .001. Pairwise comparisons with sequential Bonferroni corrections showed that adolescents displayed lower levels of opportunities for prosocial actions during week 1 (M = 3.03, SE = .16), week 2 (M = 2.80, SE = .21), and week 3 (M = 2.96, SE = .19) of the pandemic compared to T1 (M = 3.94, SE = .16, p’s < .001), and T1.5 (M = 3.76, SE = .15, p’s < .001), and T2 (M = 3.55, SE = .19, p’s < .008), see Fig 3.

Fig 3 — Timing pre-pandemic measures: T1: May–October 2018; T1.5: between T1 and T2; and T2: August 2019 –January 2020; pandemic measures (i.e., week 1, 2, and 3): March 30 –April 17, 2020. Results are displayed separately for the sample without attrition (i.e., consisting of individuals who show no attrition over time, N = 36) and the sample with attrition (i.e., consisting of all available data per time point, regardless of whether participants showed attrition, N = 36 to 53).

The following analyses focused on POMS mood measures vigor and tension. For vigor an exchangeable correlation structure had the best fit, see S6 File. The analysis showed a main effect of time, X² (3, N = 53) = 19.58, p < .001. Pairwise comparisons with sequential Bonferroni corrections showed that adolescents displayed higher levels of vigor during week 1 (M = 3.11, SE = .11), week 2 (M = 3.31, SE = .12), and week 3 (M = 3.26, SE = .13) of the pandemic compared to T1.5 (M = 2.79, SE = .08, p’s < .006), see Fig 4. For tension an unstructured correlation matrix had the best fit, see S6 File. The analysis showed a main effect of time, X² (3, N = 53) = 56.65, p < .001. Pairwise comparisons with sequential Bonferroni corrections showed that adolescents displayed lower levels of tension during week 1 (M = 1.77, SE = .10), week 2 (M = 1.47, SE = .07), and week 3 (M = 1.63, SE = .10) of the pandemic compared to T1.5 (M = 2.10, SE = .12, p’s < .019), see Fig 4.

Fig 4 — Timing pre-pandemic measures: 2018 –January 2020; pandemic measures (i.e., week 1, 2, and 3): March 30 –April 17, 2020. Results are displayed separately for the sample without attrition (i.e., consisting of individuals who show no attrition over time; N = 36) and the sample with attrition (i.e., consisting of all available data per time point, regardless of whether participants showed attrition, N = 36 to 53).

GEE models investigating time effects on dire and altruistic prosociality and social value orientation showed no effects of time, p_dire = .350, p_altruistic = .231, p_svo = .612, suggesting no pre- to peri-pandemic changes.

To compare variability levels of opportunities for prosocial actions, vigor, tension, and dire and altruistic prosociality throughout week 1, 2, and 3 of the daily diary study, GEE models were performed. There were no time effects for these variables., suggesting that variability levels did not change throughout the daily diaries study, p_{opportunities_for_prosocial_actions} = .085, p_vigor = .292, p_tension = .436.

Note that this section included multiple tests, which could lead to Type I errors. Therefore, we used Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons for main effects adjusting for correlating variables [27, 28]. In this section we performed 12 GEE models on variables with an average correlation of .18, which resulted in an adjusted significance level of α = .0042. As such, all aforementioned main effects of time survived this correction. Finally, none of the measures in this section correlated with age, suggesting that the time-related effects were not influenced by age differences.

2. Peri-pandemic familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on giving

Giving toward different targets during the COVID-19 pandemic

To examine differences in giving towards the five targets on day 1, a GEE model was performed using the five targets as a factor (i.e., an unfamiliar peer, friend, individual with poor immune system, individual with COVID-19, and a doctor working in a hospital). There was no difference between models with different correlation matrices, and therefore results obtained with an independent correlation matrix are being reported here, see S6 File. The analysis showed a main effect of target, X² (4, N = 53) = 169.70, p < .001. Pairwise comparisons with sequential Bonferroni corrections showed that the number of donated coins differed between all targets, p’s ≤ .001. As can be seen in Fig 5, participants gave most coins to a doctor working in a hospital, followed by an individual with COVID-19, followed by an individual with a poor immune system, followed by a friend, and gave the least to an unfamiliar other. To examine whether giving on day 1 differed from giving on day 15, time was added as a factor to the GEE, but the best fitting model revealed no main effect of time, nor an interaction between time and target, p_itmen = .170 p_interaction = .126. As can be seen in Fig 5, giving patterns were highly similar for day 1 and day 15 for all targets. Table 2 shows significant correlations in giving to each target across the two measurements. As can be seen in Table 2, only giving to a friend on day 15 was negatively correlated with age, such that young adolescents gave more to friends than older adolescents. None of the other correlations with age were significant.

Fig 5 — Giving was assessed on day 1 (i.e., March 30, 2020) and 15 (i.e., April 17, 2020). Giving to all targets differed significantly from each other on day 1, as indicated by Bonferroni corrected pairwise comparisons, p’s < .010. There were no differences in giving between day 1 and 15. Results are displayed separately for the sample without attrition (i.e., consisting of individuals who show no attrition over time; N = 36) and the sample with attrition (i.e., consisting of all available data per time point, regardless of whether participants showed attrition, N = 36 to 53).

Table 2. Pearson correlations between age and giving to different targets on day 1 and 15, as measured during the daily diaries study.

	Giving scores day 1 (N = 53)					Giving scores day 15 (N = 36)
	Unfamiliar peer	Friend	Individual with poor immune system	Individual with COVID-19	Doctor working at a hospital	Unfamiliar peer	Friend	Individual with poor immune system	Individual with COVID-19	Doctor working at a hospital
Age (N = 53)	.13	-.22	-.06	.00	-.15	-.18	-.39*	.04	-.09	.10
Giving scores day 1 (N = 53)
Unfamiliar Peer	--
Friend	-.09	--
Individual with poor immune system	.06	-.15	--
Individual with COVID-19	.05	.17	.72^**	--
Doctor working at a hospital	.03	.15	.37^**	.46^**	--
Giving scores day 15 (N = 36)
Unfamiliar Peer	.19^**	.04	.16	.19	.17	--
Friend	-.36*	.28	-.12	-.04	.10	.30	--
Individual with poor immune system	.42^**	-.20	.36*	.42*	.45^**	.34*	-.11	--
Individual with COVID-19	.27	-.14	.40*	.57^**	.42*	.23	-.18	.74^**	--
Doctor working at a hospital	.12	-.19	.24	.10	.54^**	-.05	-.13	.58^**	.44^**	--

Open in a new tab

Note: p ≤ .050

**: p ≤ .010

***: p ≤ .001.

In this section, 53 correlations and 2 GEE models were calculated for variables with an average correlation of .14. Using Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons for main effects adjusting for correlating variables [27, 28], this resulted in an adjusted significance level of α = .0009, which only the analysis examining the main effect of target survived. Note that p‐values below .001 were reported as p < .001. Correlations and associated significance levels are still reported in Table 2 to inform future research.

Discussion

In the current study we investigated: 1) effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdown on Dutch adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior, and 2) familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on peri-pandemic Dictator Game giving. Results related to the first part showed that during three of the first weeks of pandemic lockdown, adolescents across ages 10–20 years showed increased levels of social-cognitive perspective-taking and vigor compared to before the pandemic lockdown. Furthermore, they showed stable levels of general contributions to society, social value orientation, altruism and dire prosociality. Finally, they showed decreased levels of empathic concern, opportunities for prosocial actions, and tension. Results related to the second part showed that adolescents showed higher levels of peri-pandemic giving to a friend (i.e., familiar other; 51% of resources) relative to an unfamiliar peer (39% of resources). Adolescents also showed higher levels of giving to a doctor in the hospital (deserving, 78% of resources) and individuals with COVID-19 or a poor immune system (in need; i.e., 69 and 63% of resources, respectively) relative to an unfamiliar peer. The discussion is organized in line with these findings.

Pre- to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

The findings of this study suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic influences adolescents’ mood and social inclinations. Adolescents showed relatively lower levels of empathic concern during the first weeks of lockdown, which prior studies already have shown to be an important predictor for social relations [19]. Lower levels of empathic concern during the pandemic relative to measures in the same individuals obtained one and two years prior could indicate that adolescents became relatively more emotionally self-focused when experiencing lockdown and social distancing [1]. Indeed, opportunities for prosocial actions also declined relative to measurements prior to the pandemic. This suggests that adolescents had fewer opportunities to feel with and support others due to their limited opportunities to interact with people outside their household [2, 29]. Although studies examining levels of empathic concern in crisis situations are scarce, especially with regard to adolescence, studies in adults have shown that social interactions and support are important predictors of resilience and a better emergence from crisis situations [30]. Thus, a larger body of evidence has shown that social interactions are necessary for empathic social development. Therefore, future studies should examine long-term socio-emotional consequences of the reported decreases in empathic concern and opportunities for prosocial actions.

Interestingly, adolescents showed increases in social-cognitive perspective-taking and vigor, and decreases in tension relative to time points prior to the pandemic. The increase in vigor and decrease in tension was unexpected, but might indicate that adolescents normally experience stress and pressure, possibly related to school or other obligations, which has been shown to be a growing problem for young people [31, 32]. These findings are in line with prior studies showing that crisis situations can sometimes have positive effects on mental health and personal growth [30, 33]. It should be noted that our findings could be specific for adolescents and young adults [34], as a recent longitudinal study with pre-pandemic data demonstrated that adults show increases in depression and anxiety during the pandemic [35]. The increase in perspective-taking might indicate that the crisis offered adolescents an opportunity to cognitively empathize with others. In prior studies higher levels of perspective-taking have been associated with increased giving to and willingness to interact with out-group members [5, 36]. Future research should examine whether any beneficial effects persist during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and whether they have long-term effects on adolescents’ social behavior.

In contrast to opportunities for prosocial actions, which declined during the pandemic, we found no pre- to peri-pandemic changes in general contributions to society, social value orientation and altruistic and dire prosociality. Our findings suggest no changes in general prosocial tendencies towards unfamiliar others or society as a whole, only a decline in concrete daily prosocial actions towards familiar others (i.e., friends). Interestingly, recent studies in adults have suggested that during the pandemic there is a shift towards pandemic-specific prosocial behaviors. For example, these studies have demonstrated that the pandemic makes individuals more likely to prioritize society’s problems over their own, but less willing to give to non-COVID-19 related causes [37, 38]. This interpretation also fits with our finding that Dictator Game giving is higher for COVID-19 related targets. Future studies should aim to replicate this finding in both adults and adolescents and examine whether this shift persists further into and after the pandemic.

Peri-pandemic giving to others

The finding that adolescents give more to familiar others, and those who are in need or deserving, is in line with prior studies [5, 7, 15]. Here, adolescents gave significantly more to friends (i.e., around 50%; [5, 15]) than to unfamiliar peers. Secondly, we found that adolescents donated more to doctors (individuals who are deserving), individuals with COVID-19, and individuals with a poor immune system (individuals in need in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic) compared to friends and unfamiliar peers. This suggests that need and deservedness had a greater influence on adolescent giving than familiarity in the ecologically valid context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies should investigate whether the high levels of giving to COVID-19 related targets are long-term or wear off over time. Another interesting direction for future research is to link these types of giving with COVID-19 related health behaviors and engagement with government regulations. Recent studies in adults have namely demonstrated links between pandemic health behaviors and various forms of prosociality [39–42]. Finally, the novel Dictator Games provided a reliable measure of giving as was shown by significant correlations across time (i.e., r’s .19-.57), although these correlations were lower than those of studies where Dictator Games to anonymous others were repeatedly administered in the same sitting (i.e., r’s .70-.91). The only target for which giving was not significantly correlated over time was the friend, which was also the target that showed an association with age at the final time point. Possible explanations include that adolescents thought of a different friend across time points or that their relationship changed over the course of three weeks. The correlations over time for the other targets may also have been influenced by time-related variability in target perception, especially since these measures were taken in the first weeks of the pandemic [43].

Strengths, limitations, and recommendations for future research

This study had several strengths. First, we used intensive daily diary assessments during the pandemic. As such, measurements within individuals were based upon multiple assessments which increases robustness and reliability. Second, to draw reliable conclusions about changes in behavior, it is important that measurements are obtained pre- and peri-pandemic, as was the case in our longitudinal project. The within-subject-, longitudinal design enhanced statistical power. Third, this study obtained data in the first weeks of the pandemic, and is therefore unique in capturing the very early experiences of being in lockdown. Fourth, the novel experimental Dictator Games allowed us to disentangle familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on giving in an ecological valid context (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic). Fifth, this study focused on pandemic effects on adolescents, a relatively understudied age period that is formative for socio-emotional development.

The current study also has several limitations that should be addressed in future research. First, to the awareness of participants the Dictator Games and associated payout were hypothetical, which could raise concerns regarding ecological validity. Reassuringly, as supported by meta-analytic evidence, individuals generally give away a similar number of resources in Dictator Games when real money is involved [20]. Several studies demonstrated associations between economic games such as the Dictator Game and actual and self-reported prosocial behaviors [5, 44, 45]. However, some studies failed to find such associations [46], and therefore more research is needed to evaluate the external validity of Dictator Games, including variations with multiple targets. Second, we invited adolescents enrolled in a cohort-sequential longitudinal study to participate in the daily diary study during the pandemic. While this allowed us to compare experiences and social behavior prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it could have introduced self-selection bias (e.g. inclusion of empathic and altruistic individuals) and it limited our potential sample size. There are several factors that could explain the attrition in this study. First, the pandemic and lockdown resulted in many changes in the lives of adolescents and their parents, including home schooling, new family routines and online communication. The current study was performed ad hoc and required participants to sign up within the period of one week. This may have caused larger attrition than is typical in longitudinal studies. Second, it is noteworthy that attrition was larger for males than for females. There is currently no explanation for this difference, but it is worth noting that other pandemic studies have also shown higher participation of females compared to males [34, 35, 37, 39]. To investigate the extent to which self-selection bias influenced our results, we examined whether adolescents who did not participate in the daily diary study differed from those who did, see S7 File. These analyses showed that adolescents who participated in the daily diary study showed slightly higher pre-pandemic levels of empathic concern and altruism, but did not differ in pre-pandemic levels of mood, perspective-taking, age, and dire prosociality. Future studies should employ large, diverse samples to test the robustness of our findings and to test for individual differences (e.g., in giving). A third limitation is that the COVID-19 pandemic might impact the saliency of other emotions than tension and vigor, such as fear (e.g., fear of death or to lose a loved one), which in turn can affect certain forms of prosociality [12]. Future studies should investigate the effect the COVID-19 pandemic on such emotions and assess their relationship with prosocial tendencies. Fourth, we cannot conclude that changes in mood and social inclinations reported here were only driven by the pandemic. Time trends such as aging and seasonality may also play a role. However, given the relatively large changes between the second measurement wave and pandemic—despite the short time in between–we deem it most plausible that effects are directly related to the pandemic. Fifth, another direction for future research includes social media and other forms of digital social interactions, and how they influence the interplay between adolescents’ social behavior and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, this study only addressed immediate experiences in the first weeks of lockdown. Future studies should examine the long-term effects of the pandemic and social distancing [2].

Conclusion

In conclusion, this daily diary study used a cohort-sequential sample of adolescents to examine pre- to peri-COVID 19 pandemic changes in mood, empathy, prosocial behavior, as well as familiarity-, need- and deservedness- effects on Dictator Game giving. We demonstrated that levels of empathic concern and opportunities for prosocial actions dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly reflecting a lack of perceived opportunity due to social distancing measures [2]. However, adolescents also showed resilience or even possible benefits as a result of the lockdown, as evidenced by increased levels of perspective-taking and vigor, decreased levels of tension, and high levels of giving to COVID-19 related targets. The results of this study shed new light on adolescence as a crucial period in life for social interactions, and as a phase that is not only characterized by risk behavior, but also by resilience and a willingness to meaningfully contribute to others and society [7, 8]. It will be an important aim for researchers and policy makers to utilize this feature of adolescence, for example by involving adolescents in efforts to shape society and the future for the better. Finally, this study demonstrated that various types of prosociality were differentially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly as a result of a shift towards pandemic-specific prosocial behaviors. This result highlights the need to differentiate between various forms of prosocial behaviors to increase our understanding of their etiology and how they shape human development.

Supporting information

S1 Fig. Age and gender distributions of the daily diary sample.

(TIF)

Click here for additional data file.^{(69.7KB, tif)}

S1 File. Details regarding statistical analyses, including assumption checks.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(15.1KB, docx)}

S2 File. Results for other measures assessed during the daily diary study.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(13.3KB, docx)}

S3 File. Histograms of key variables.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(2.7MB, docx)}

S4 File. Overview and copies of all used and developed questionnaires in English.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(168.8KB, docx)}

S5 File. Overview and copies of all used and developed questionnaires in Dutch.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(140.6KB, docx)}

S6 File. Details on GEE analyses.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(27.1KB, docx)}

S7 File. Attrition: Did participants who decided not to participate in the daily diary study differ from those who did participate?.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(13KB, docx)}

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all participants for their participation.

Data Availability

The data are available at DOI 10.25397/eur.12783161.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by an innovative ideas grant of the European Research Council (ERC CoG PROSOCIAL 681632 to E.A.C.)

References

1.Crone EA, Dahl RE. Understanding adolescence as a period of social–affective engagement and goal flexibility. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2012. September;13(9):636–50. 10.1038/nrn3313 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
2.Orben A, Tomova L, Blakemore S-J. The effects of social deprivation on adolescent development and mental health. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2020. June;S2352464220301863. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
3.van Hoorn J, Fuligni AJ, Crone EA, Galván A. Peer influence effects on risk-taking and prosocial decision-making in adolescence: insights from neuroimaging studies. Curr Opin Behav Sci. 2016. August 1;10:59–64. [Google Scholar]
4.Blakemore S-J. The social brain in adolescence. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2008. April;9(4):267–77. 10.1038/nrn2353 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
5.van de Groep S, Zanolie K, Crone EA. Giving to Friends, Classmates, and Strangers in Adolescence. J Res Adolesc. 2020;30(S2):290–7. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
6.Crone EA. Considerations of Fairness in the Adolescent Brain. Child Dev Perspect. 2013;7(2):97–103. [Google Scholar]
7.Fuligni AJ. The need to contribute during adolescence. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2019;14(3):331–43. 10.1177/1745691618805437 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
8.Crone EA, Fuligni AJ. Self and others in adolescence. Annu Rev Psychol. 2020;71:447–69. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
9.Van Bavel JJ, Baicker K, Boggio PS, Capraro V, Cichocka A, Cikara M, et al. Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nat Hum Behav. 2020;1–12. 10.1038/s41562-020-0818-9 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
10.Cacioppo JT, Hawkley LC, Thisted RA. Perceived Social Isolation Makes Me Sad: Five Year Cross-Lagged Analyses of Loneliness and Depressive Symptomatology in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study. Psychol Aging. 2010. June;25(2):453–63. 10.1037/a0017216 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
11.Matthews GA, Tye KM. Neural mechanisms of social homeostasis. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2019;1457(1):5–25. 10.1111/nyas.14016 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
12.Capraro V. The dual-process approach to human sociality: A review. Available SSRN 3409146. 2019;
13.Masten AS, Motti-Stefanidi F. Multisystem Resilience for Children and Youth in Disaster: Reflections in the Context of COVID-19. Advers Resil Sci. 2020. June 1;1(2):95–106. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
14.Yeager DS, Dahl RE, Dweck CS. Why Interventions to Influence Adolescent Behavior Often Fail but Could Succeed. Perspect Psychol Sci J Assoc Psychol Sci. 2018. Jan;13(1):101–22. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
15.Güroğlu B, van den Bos W, Crone EA. Sharing and giving across adolescence: an experimental study examining the development of prosocial behavior. Front Psychol. 2014;5:291 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00291 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
16.Kahneman D, Knetsch JL, Thaler RH. Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics. J Bus. 1986;59(4):S285–300. [Google Scholar]
17.Will G-J, Güroğlu B. A Neurocognitive Perspective on the Development of Social Decision-Making In: Reuter M, Montag C, editors. Neuroeconomics [Internet]. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. [cited 2020 Jun 23]. p. 293–309. (Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics). Available from: 10.1007/978-3-642-35923-1_15 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
18.Asscheman JS, He J, Koot S, Buil JM, Krabbendam L, van Lier PAC. Classroom peer preferences and the development of sharing behavior with friends and others. Int J Behav Dev. 2020. March 25;0165025420911094. [Google Scholar]
19.Overgaauw S, Güroğlu B, Rieffe C, Crone EA. Behavior and Neural Correlates of Empathy in Adolescents. Dev Neurosci. 2014;36(3–4):210–9. 10.1159/000363318 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
20.Engel C. Dictator games: A meta study. Exp Econ. 2011;14(4):583–610. [Google Scholar]
21.Davis MH. Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1983;44(1):113. [Google Scholar]
22.Blankenstein NE, Telzer EH, Do KT, van Duijvenvoorde ACK, Crone EA. Behavioral and Neural Pathways Supporting the Development of Prosocial and Risk-Taking Behavior Across Adolescence. Child Dev. 2020. May;91(3):e665–81. 10.1111/cdev.13292 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
23.Wald F, Mellenbergh G. De verkorte versie van de nederlandse vertaling van de Profile of Mood States (POMS). Ned Tijdschr Psychol. 1990; [Google Scholar]
24.Carlo G, Hausmann A, Christiansen S, Randall BA. Sociocognitive and behavioral correlates of a measure of prosocial tendencies for adolescents. J Early Adolesc. 2003;23(1):107–34. [Google Scholar]
25.Murphy RO, Ackermann KA, Handgraaf M. Measuring Social Value Orientation [Internet]. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network; 2011. December [cited 2020 Aug 6]. Report No.: ID 1804189. Available from: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1804189 [Google Scholar]
26.Muth C, Bales KL, Hinde K, Maninger N, Mendoza SP, Ferrer E. Alternative Models for Small Samples in Psychological Research. Educ Psychol Meas. 2016. February;76(1):64–87. 10.1177/0013164415580432 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
27.Bonferroni correction online. [Internet]. [cited 2020 Aug 11]. Available from: https://www.quantitativeskills.com/sisa/calculations/bonfer.htm
28.Sankoh AJ, Huque MF, Dubey SD. Some comments on frequently used multiple endpoint adjustment methods in clinical trials. Stat Med. 1997;16(22):2529–42. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
29.McDonald NM. In Acerbi A, Lombo J. A, & Sanguineti J. J (Eds), Free will, Emotions, and Moral Actions: Philosophy and Neuroscience in Dialogue. IF-Press; In press.: 36. [Google Scholar]
30.Brooks S, Amlôt R, Rubin GJ, Greenberg N. Psychological resilience and post-traumatic growth in disaster-exposed organisations: overview of the literature. BMJ Mil Health. 2020. February 1;166(1):52–6. 10.1136/jramc-2017-000876 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
31.“Geluk onder druk?” voor professionals [Internet]. UNICEF. 2020 [cited 2020 Jun 23]. Available from: https://www.unicef.nl/ons-werk/nederland/geluk-onder-druk-een-onderzoek-over-maar-vooral-met-jongeren/professionals
32.Salmela-Aro K, Tynkkynen L. Gendered pathways in school burnout among adolescents. J Adolesc. 2012. August 1;35(4):929–39. 10.1016/j.adolescence.2012.01.001 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
33.Bonanno GA. Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? Am Psychol. 2004;59(1):20 10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.20 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
34.Fried EI. Mental Health and Social Contact During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study. 2020. April 24 [cited 2020 Jun 23]; Available from: https://psyarxiv.com/36xkp/ [Google Scholar]
35.Mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in two longitudinal UK population cohorts | medRxiv [Internet]. [cited 2020 Jun 23]. Available from: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.16.20133116v1 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
36.Wang CS, Lee M, Ku G, Leung AK -y. The Cultural Boundaries of Perspective-Taking: When and Why Perspective-Taking Reduces Stereotyping: Pers Soc Psychol Bull [Internet]. 2018. February 28 [cited 2020 Jun 23]; Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167218757453 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
37.Branas-Garza P, Jorrat DA, Alfonso A, Espin AM, García T, Kovarik J. Exposure to the Covid-19 pandemic and generosity [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. April [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/6ktuz [Google Scholar]
38.Cappelen AW, Falch R, Sørensen EØ, Tungodden B. Solidarity and Fairness in Times of Crisis. SSRN Electron J [Internet]. 2020. [cited 2020 Aug 5]; Available from: https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=3600806 [Google Scholar]
39.Zettler I, Schild C, Lilleholt L, Kroencke L, Utesch T, moshagen morten, et al. The role of personality in COVID-19 related perceptions, evaluations, and behaviors: Findings across five samples, nine traits, and 17 criteria [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. March [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/pkm2a [Google Scholar]
40.Campos-Mercade P, Meier A, Schneider F, Wengström E. Prosociality Predicts Health Behaviors during the COVID-19 Pandemic. SSRN Electron J [Internet]. 2020. [cited 2020 Aug 5]; Available from: https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=3604094 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
41.Everett JAC, Colombatto C, Chituc V, Brady WJ, Crockett M. The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. March [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/9yqs8 [Google Scholar]
42.Bilancini E, Boncinelli L, Capraro V, Celadin T, Di Paolo R. The effect of norm-based messages on reading and understanding COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. May [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/7863g [Google Scholar]
43.Poulin F, Chan A. Friendship stability and change in childhood and adolescence. Dev Rev. 2010. September 1;30(3):257–72. [Google Scholar]
44.Franzen A, Pointner S. The external validity of giving in the dictator game. Exp Econ. 2013. June 1;16(2):155–69. [Google Scholar]
45.What motivates repayment? Neural correlates of reciprocity in the Trust Game | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | Oxford Academic [Internet]. [cited 2020 Jun 23]. Available from: https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/4/3/294/1633442 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
46.Galizzi MM, Navarro-Martinez D. On the external validity of social preference games: a systematic lab-field study. Manag Sci. 2019;65(3):976–1002. [Google Scholar]

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349.r001

Decision Letter 0

Valerio Capraro

16 Jul 2020

PONE-D-20-19516

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, concern for others, and giving behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. van de Groep,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please find below the reviewers' and mine's comments.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 30 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Valerio Capraro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information.

3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

I have now collected two reviews from two experts in the field. Both reviews are positive but suggest substantial revisions. Therefore, I would like to invite you to revise your work following the reviewers' comments. Additionally, I would like to add a few more comments. (i) in the discussion, you say that dictator game giving when real money is involved is higher than hypothetical giving, and you cite a paper by Engel. First of all, Engel's paper has been published in 2011 in Experimental Economics (please update your reference list). But, more importantly, your statement is wrong: Engel reports no statistically significant difference between hypothetical and real decisions. (ii) You also say that several studies have found correlation between dictator game giving and actual altruism; but you fail to mention that there are also several studies who did not find any, as for example Galizzi & Navarro-Martinez's meta-analysis. (iii) in the general introduction, the "perspective article" about what social and behavioural science can do to promote COVID-19 pandemic response, published by Van Bavel et al. on Nature Human Behaviour, can be a useful general reference. (iv) one might argue that the pandemic has made salient some emotions in general and fear of death in particular. We know from previous work that mortality salience has an effect on pro-social behaviour and that emotions in general have an effect on prosocial behaviour (see Capraro 2019 for a review). Perhaps it would be useful to discuss potential links between your work and this of work.

Of course, it is not a requirement to cite all these works, but I am mentioning them because they seem very related to your work.

I am looking forward for the revision.

References:

Capraro, V. (2019). The dual-process approach to human sociality: A review. Available at SSRN 3409146.

Galizzi, M. M., & Navarro-Martinez, D. (2019). On the external validity of social preference games: a systematic lab-field study. Management Science, 65, 976-1002.

Van Bavel, J. J., et al. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Summary: This paper investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown affects social concerns and mood of adolescents by comparing measures before and during the pandemic. Moreover, the authors study whether dictator giving towards people associated with COVID-19 (doctors, individual with COVID-19, individual with a poor immune system) differs from dictator giving towards others (friend, unfamiliar peer). Finally, they correlate dictator giving with different measures of empathy and social concerns.

Evaluation: I think it is important to study how COVID-19 policies affect development of social preferences among adolescents. However, I am concerned about the robustness and validity of the findings presented in the paper: there is no effect for many outcome variables, the sample size is small and the research questions differ substantially from the pre-registration plan. I think the paper should be revised substantially to discuss these concerns and do additional robustness tests.

Comments

1. No effects on many outcomes variables

A key question addressed in this project is how the COVID-19 pandemic affects concerns for others and social behavior. In paper, authors report effects on emphatic concerns, perspective taking, general contribution to society, opportunities for prosocial actions and mood. However, the authors elicit additional measures of social behavior such as dire, altruism and social value orientation. They report results for these measures in Appendix S2:

“We examined whether adolescents’ levels of dire and altruistic prosociality, as well as their social value orientation changed when comparing measures prior to and during the pandemic. Repeated measures ANOVAs indicated no changes over time in these variables.”

I think these null results should be reported in the main text of the paper. This allows the reader to assess the validity of the findings. Moreover, given that the authors look at many outcome variables and only find statistically significant effects for some of them, there seems to be a potential problem with multiple hypothesis testing. I think the authors should account for this issue in the paper.

2. Could results be driven by a time trend?

The authors compares concerns for others before and during the pandemic. While it seems likely that the reported effects are driven by the experience of the pandemic, they could also come from a time trend (e.g., aging or seasonality). While the authors can not control for time trends, I think they should discuss this concern in the paper (for example, by arguing that we would not expect any aging effect to occur during such a short time span).

3. Small sample size

Sample sizes are in between 36 and 53, which makes me worried that the study might be underpowered.

4. Potential for experimenter demand effects

The authors find that participants give more money to others if they are associated with COVID-19 (in hypothetical choices). I am worried that this effect is driven by experimenter demand effects. This concern might be partially addressed by controlling for the social desirability measure they collect. (Although social desirability might also reflect prosociality).

5. Research questions differ from pre-registration

The research questions studied seem to differ substantially from what was pre-registered (https://osf.io/kgcdm/). I think the authors should mention this in the paper and report the results for the initial questions in the Appendix.

6. I think the writing of the paper could be improved

I think the writing of the paper could benefit from a stronger focus on its core contribution and from pointing out what its key insights and implications are. (For example, it is not clear to me what we learn from dictator giving towards people associated with COVID-19.)

Reviewer #2: Overview

The study makes multiple, tentatively related observations using a unique survey of adolescents. The authors present one set of findings comparing pre-pandemic and pandemic data: mood improves (vigor increases, tension decreases), empathetic concern decreases, and perspective taking increases. Drawing on data exclusively collected during the pandemic the authors furthermore observe that adolescents state that they would give the same amount of money to healthcare workers as to friends. The authors argue that these results are intimately tied to reduced social contacts during the pandemic. While I think that studying the impact of the pandemic on adolescents is important, I have some concerns which I detail below.

Major Concerns:

1) Connection between motivation and results

a. The motivation is focuses heavily on social contacts which is one important thing that changed during lockdown. But a lot of other important things changed as well, which may have/did affect mood, worries about the future, worries about the health of family members etc. The described link between social contacts and the behaviors investigated is too tentative for me. The authors should give more room to other factors that could also play a role in the introduction. This would also allow them to describe more nuanced expectations (see below).

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PLoS One. 2020 Oct 7;15(10):e0240349. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

14 Aug 2020

We thank the editor for the opportunity to revise our article ‘A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, concern for others, and giving behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please find below our replies to the helpful comments we received.

Additional Requirements

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

Answer: We checked whether our manuscript meets all PLOS ONE’s style requirements and made adjustments where needed.

Answer: We included copies of all used and developed questionnaires in both Dutch and English in S5 and S6. Note that this information is also available online: https://osf.io/kgcdm/.

Answer: All data is now uploaded to the EUR repository and follows FAIR principles. The data can be found through this confidential link: https://figshare.com/s/4d0529fe38e7baa5e2a8. Data will be made publicly available upon acceptance using DOI 10.25397/eur.12783161.

Answer: We included captions for all our Supporting Information files at the end of the manuscript, and updated all in-text citations accordingly.

Additional Editor Comments:

Of course, it is not a requirement to cite all these works, but I am mentioning them because they seem very related to your work.

I am looking forward for the revision.

References:

Capraro, V. (2019). The dual-process approach to human sociality: A review. Available at SSRN 3409146.

Galizzi, M. M., & Navarro-Martinez, D. (2019). On the external validity of social preference games: a systematic lab-field study. Management Science, 65, 976-1002.

Van Bavel, J. J., et al. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour.

Answer: We thank the editor for the opportunity to revise our manuscript. (i) We agree with the editor’s comment regarding the Engel paper, as the effect of handling real money was only visible when observing distributions instead of means. We adjusted our statement regarding the Engel paper as follows on pages 26-27: “Reassuringly, as supported by meta-analytic evidence, individuals generally give away a similar number of resources in Dictator Games when real money is involved (16)”. (ii) Thank you for acquainting us with the paper by Galizzi & Navarro. We now address your point in the discussion on page 27: “However, some studies failed to find such associations (45), therefore more research is needed to evaluate the external validity of Dictator Games, including variations with multiple targets.”. (iii) We agree that the Van Bavel article is a useful general reference and have incorporated it into our manuscript, for example on pages 3-4 “The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 represents a massive and challenging global health crisis (9). Without a vaccine, most governments have authorized containment measures, such as social distancing, to slow the pandemic (9). However, distancing conflicts with the human tendency to connect with others, which is even more pronounced in adolescence, and severely limits opportunities to have contact with people outside one’s household (1,2,9)”. (iiii) We added a brief discussion of the importance of emotions and specifically fear of death during the COVID-19 pandemic and the possible impact on prosociality on page 27: “Third, the COVID-19 pandemic might influence the saliency of other emotions than tension and vigor, such as fear (e.g., fear of death or to lose a loved one), which in turn can affect certain forms of prosociality (33). Future studies should investigate the effect the COVID-19 pandemic on such emotions and assess their relationship with prosocial tendencies.”

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer 1

Comments

1. No effects on many outcomes variables

Answer: We thank the reviewer for the suggestion to include all pre- and peri-pandemic measures on social behavior in the main text. Therefore, we now included methods and results regarding dire prosociality, altruistic prosociality, and social value orientation, see pages 15-16; 19. We also incorporated interpretations of these measures in the introduction and discussion. We did not include analyses based on other measures that were only obtained peri-pandemic (e.g., risk taking, rumination) and that were beyond the scope of the article in Supplement 2 (S2). This paper focused on emotions and social behavior specifically.

We agree that it is important to control for Type I errors. Therefore, we included the following paragraph at the end of the method section (p.16): “Note that the present study included multiple tests, which could lead to Type I errors. We used Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons adjusting for correlating variables (26,27) for main effects pertaining to both research aims. For the first research aim (i.e., investigating pre-to-peri pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior) we performed 15 Repeated Measures (RM) ANOVAs on variables with an average correlation of .19, which resulted in an adjusted significance level of α = .0056. For the second research aim (i.e., peri-pandemic familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on giving) we performed 105 correlations and 3 RM ANOVA’s on variables with an average correlation of .16, which resulted in an adjusted significance level of α = .0009. To interpret main effects found in RM ANOVAs, post-hoc tests were conducted using Bonferroni corrected pairwise comparisons. As such, most confidence should be placed in the results reported with p‐values < .007 and < .001, respectively (p‐values below .001 were reported as p < .001). Exact p‐values are still reported in cases where p > .001, to inform future research.”

2. Could results be driven by a time trend?

Answer: We agree that we cannot strictly conclude that reported effects with regard to concern for others are only driven by the experience of the pandemic, and not by time trends aging or seasonality. However, Figure 2 shows that the change between T2 and the pandemic is larger than the change between T1 and T2, despite T2 and the pandemic being closer together in time, see below. This makes it unlikely that the results are due to aging.

T1: May – October 2018

T2: August 2019- January 2020

Pandemic: March/April 2020

We now included this in the discussion on page 27: “Fourth, we cannot conclude that the results regarding changes in mood and social inclinations are only driven by the pandemic. Time trends such as aging and seasonality may also play a role. However, given the large changes between the second measurement wave and pandemic - despite the short time span and in comparison to trends observed prior to the pandemic– we deem it most plausible that effects are directly related to the pandemic."

3. Small sample size

Sample sizes are in between 36 and 53, which makes me worried that the study might be underpowered.

Answer: We agree that studies ideally have larger sample sizes. However, there are several reasons why this study makes a valuable contribution to the literature. First, we used intensive daily diary assessments, therefore measurements within individuals were based on multiple assessments which increases robustness and reliability. Second, to draw reliable conclusions about changes in behavior, it is important that measurements are obtained prior to and during the pandemic, as is the case in our longitudinal project. Within-subject-, longitudinal designs enhance statistical power, which in our view outweighs the disadvantages of the smaller sample size. Third, this study obtained data in the first weeks of the pandemic, and therefore is unique in capturing the very early experiences of being in lockdown. Other studies should replicate the reported effects using larger sample sizes, which we mention in the discussion on page 27: “Secondly, we invited individuals who participated in a cohort-sequential longitudinal study to participate in the daily diary study during the pandemic. While this allowed us to compare experiences and social behavior prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it could also have introduced self-selection bias (e.g. inclusion of empathic and altruistic individuals) and it limited our potential sample size. The attrition was larger in males, a trend that is also observed in other studies (31,32,34,36). Future studies should employ large, diverse samples to test the robustness of these findings and to test for individual differences.”

4. Potential for experimenter demand effects

Answer: Based on your suggestion, we tested whether the target effects in the Dictator Game still held when controlling for social desirability. We added the social desirability response set (SDRS-5) variable as a covariate to the repeated measures ANOVA within target (5 levels) as a within-subject variable. There was no main effect of social desirability on giving (p = .371), nor was there an interaction between social desirability and target (p = .223). In addition, calculating bivariate correlations between social desirability and giving to each of the five targets revealed no significant associations.

These findings strengthen our interpretation that the results obtained in this study are not driven by experimenter demand effects. Furthermore, our instructions were carefully designed to prevent experimenter demand effects or norm communication, as participants were explained that there were no right or wrong answers and they could decide upon the division of coins by themselves. Typically, norm driven behavior would lead to equity divisions in zero sum games (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999; Meuwese, Crone, de Rooij, & Güroglu, 2015), therefore, the larger donations to COVID-19 targets can be interpreted as prosocial behavior. Finally, we displayed each trial (i.e., the donation to each target) on separate screens, which together with the randomized order minimized adjustments based on targets yet to come. The details regarding the instructions are now more explicitly mentioned in the methods (pages 16-17, e.g. “To minimize experimenter demand effects, it was emphasized that there were no right or wrong answers, and each trial (i.e., the donation to each target) was shown on a separate screen.”).

5. Research questions differ from pre-registration

Answer: For the current study, we pre-registered our ethics protocol and all the measurement instruments we used. Several questions from the pre-registered ethics protocol could not be answered in this study due to the small sample size and to prevent further density of the manuscript. For example, the questions “When and how do changes in emotional reactivity result in risks and opportunities for prosocial development and which factors facilitate opportunities for positive, prosocial development?” and “Which experiences at what ages create the greatest opportunities for positive and prosocial development and which experiences trigger self-protection mechanisms?” can best be answered in a study using a larger sample size to successfully account for individual differences.

We explain this on page 12 of the manuscript: “There is an Open Science Framework (OSF) entry for the daily diary study (https://osf.io/kgcdm/) including a detailed description of all obtained measures and this study’s ethics protocol. In the current study, we deviated from some of the original questions described on the OSF because the sample size of this study was relatively small. We therefore only described main time effects, and explored individual differences in Dictator Game giving. The hypotheses related to individual differences trajectories should be examined in separate studies with larger sample sizes.”

6. I think the writing of the paper could be improved

Answer: We made several adjustments to create a stronger focus on our two core contributions: 1) comparing pre-to peri pandemic measures of mood, empathy and prosocial behavior, and 2) to investigate familiarity- need- and deservedness-effects on giving; and to point out key insights and implications. For example, we more explicitly mention the core aims in the abstract, introduction, and discussion, and used sub-headings in the introduction and discussion to further emphasize the two main aims.

Prior psychological and economic literature shows that ‘need’ and ‘deserving’ are important drivers of prosocial behavior to unfamiliar others (see for example Engel, 2011). The pandemic poses a unique situation as it makes the need of certain targets particularly evident in an ecologically valid context. As prior studies in adolescents have shown the importance of whether a target is unknown or familiar (e.g., an unfamiliar peer vs. friend) for giving behavior, we were interested to extend these findings by including unfamiliar targets that were in need or deserving. For this purpose, we used the validated Dictator Game to examine giving towards people associated with COVID-19. These findings may provide us with more insight into mechanisms and motivations underlying giving to different types of targets – especially when combined with personality measures such as perspective taking and empathic concern.

We included an explanation on the above in our manuscript on pages 4-5: “The COVID-19 pandemic represents a particularly interesting and unique context to extend our knowledge about adolescents’ giving to various targets, which has so far mainly focused on peers (5,14,17). Specifically, COVID-19 introduces ecologically valid targets that are in need or deserving. These targets of interest include individuals with a poor immune system or COVID-19 symptoms (i.e., targets in need) and medical personnel, such as doctors working in hospitals (i.e., deserving targets). We compared giving to these three targets with giving to an unfamiliar peer (i.e., the default option in most economic games) and a friend (i.e., a target that is more familiar and similar). The reason to examine giving towards targets with verifying degrees of familiarity, similarity, and need and deservedness within individuals was to get more insight in the mechanisms and motivations underlying giving decisions.”

Furthermore, we emphasize our core contributions and main strengths in the discussion on page 26-27: “This study had several strengths. First, we used intensive daily diary assessments during the pandemic. As such, measurements within individuals were based upon multiple assessments which increases robustness and reliability. Second, to draw reliable conclusions about changes in behavior, it is important that measurements are obtained pre- and peri-pandemic, as was the case in our longitudinal project. The within-subject-, longitudinal design enhanced statistical power. Third, this study obtained data in the first weeks of the pandemic, and is therefore unique in capturing the very early experiences of being in lockdown. Fourth, the novel experimental Dictator Games allowed us to disentangle familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on giving in an ecological valid context (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic). Fifth, this study focused on pandemic effects on adolescents, a relatively understudied age period that is formative with regard to socio-emotional development.”

Reviewer 2

Reviewer #2: Overview

Overview

Major Concerns:

1) Connection between motivation and results

Answer: We now included these suggestions in the introduction and discussion, see p.5 “Besides social distancing, the pandemic has resulted in many other changes for adolescents, including possible worry about health of family members, fear of death, worry about financial consequences, and worry about one’s future (9,12). Therefore, social changes in the pandemic should be interpreted in the context of multiple system disruptions (13).”

2) Key findings and main contribution

a. The authors present a collection of interesting results. However, it remains unknown to the reader what the authors see as their main contribution. I am aware that the study is exploratory, but it feels like there are too many different results which do not necessarily fit together well. There are two potential solutions: i) a reduction of the number of highlighted results, ii) a more thorough description of how the results are related. I would recommend the authors to focus on a subset of the results they currently present. From my point of view, the before and after comparison on mood, empathetic concern, and perspective taking has the most potential, since the authors have the same data before and during the pandemic. An alternative may be to focus on the giving aspect while highlighting the other results as a support for your findings on giving. In any case, the main contribution of the authors has to be more clearly stated in the introduction.

Answer: We thank the reviewer for the suggestion to streamline the manuscript and highlight main contributions. We made changes to more clearly highlight the two main contributions/aspects of the current study: 1) comparing pre- to peri-pandemic measures of mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior to investigate changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) investigating peri-pandemic effects of target familiarity, need, and deservedness on giving behavior by utilizing novel hypothetical dictator games with ecologically valid targets; and to examine moderating effects of empathy, contributions to society, and opportunities for prosocial actions (i.e., variables that changed as a result of the pandemic).

This decision was also based on reviewer 1’s recommendations to include all acquired data of which we had pre- and peri-pandemic measures into the manuscript. We hope the rationale is now described more clearly with the stronger focus on the two main goals of the study.

b. The abstract can lead to misinterpretation. Which results are based on before and after data? How are the different results connected? The reader is a bit lost with all the bits of information. For example, the mood effects are mentioned in passing. Then the authors go on at length describing levels of giving, whereas the reader was expecting the authors to describe changes in giving because of the pandemic. I feel the authors should more clearly highlight the cross-sectional nature of their investigation for the giving results, rather than first implying focusing on changes, but then discussing giving based on levels. In my view, it would help to state clearly which data are available for a before and after comparison and which data were only collected during the pandemic. At the same time, given the different results, the abstract is quite long. If the authors shorten the highlighted set of results it will probably improve the flow of the abstract, too.

Answer: We thank the reviewer for the suggestions and now describe more clearly which results are informed by peri-pandemic measurements only (i.e., the giving results) and which results are informed by both pre- and peri-pandemic measurements. We adjusted the abstract and introduction based on this suggestion.

3) Giving results

a. The authors do surveys with hypothetical choices. They should make this clear in the abstract and introduction.

Answer: We now more explicitly mentioned this in the abstract and introduction.

b. The authors should discuss the merits of using a dictator game with multiple recipients and the potential impacts on the results compared to a situation where one game is played with each recipient.

Answer: We used single shot dictator games in which participants divided 10 coins between themselves and another target. As such, they played 5 trials of the game (i.e., one with each target), which were displayed on separate screens and presented in randomized order. We chose this within-subject design over a between-subjects design where each participant encountered only one of the five targets to increase statistical power.

Although most prior studies have focused on anonymous giving, we decided to focus on giving to various targets for several reasons. First of all, giving to completely anonymous others is less prevalent in adolescents’ lives than giving to individuals with whom they have relationships. Second, giving towards targets with various degrees of familiarity and need within the same individuals may give insight into the possibly different mechanisms and motivations underlying these types of giving, especially when investigated in interplay with personality factors such as perspective taking and empathic concern.

We now emphasized the advantages of our design more clearly in our manuscript, see page 4, “The COVID-19 pandemic represents a particularly interesting and unique context to extend our knowledge about adolescents’ giving to various targets, which has so far mainly focused on peers (5,14,17). Specifically, COVID-19 introduces ecologically valid targets that are in need or deserving. These targets of interest include individuals with a poor immune system or COVID-19 symptoms (i.e., targets in need) and medical personnel, such as doctors working in hospitals (i.e., deserving targets). We compared giving to these three targets with giving to an unfamiliar peer (i.e., the default option in most economic games) and a friend (i.e., a target that is more familiar and similar). The reason to examine giving towards targets with verifying degrees of familiarity, similarity, and need and deservedness within individuals was to get more insight in the mechanisms and motivations underlying giving decisions.”

c. It would be good to have more details on why correlations in giving change during the pandemic, but the levels of giving does not change. How can we reconcile these findings?

Answer: There are indeed some differences in correlations between targets when comparing day 1 and day 15. The most pronounced difference has to do with the correlation between giving to an unfamiliar peer and an individual with a poor immune system. This correlation is .06 (n.s.) on day 1 (N = 53), but .34* on day 15 (N = 36). To get more insight into this difference, we calculated the correlation on day 1 only for the 36 participants who participated on day 15. The correlation was now .35*, suggesting that the change in this correlation may be due to the difference in sample size/the individuals included in the analyses.

We also created scatterplots (see reply letter attachment) for the association between giving to an unfamiliar peer and individual with a poor immune system on day 1 (N = 53 and N = 36) and on day 15 (N = 36). As can be seen below, the sample of 53 participants shows more variation: there are more adolescents who give nothing to the unfamiliar peer, while donations to the individual with a poor immune system are slightly higher. The repeated measures ANOVAs in which we compared giving levels on day 1 and 15, however, are based on the sample of 36 participants. This sample is more uniform and shows higher giving to an unfamiliar peer, but lower giving to an individual with a poor immune system compared to the N=53 sample on day 1.

This can reconcile the findings that correlations in giving change during the pandemic, whereas we did not find changes in levels of giving. We interpreted the results of participants who have giving scores on both time points, notwithstanding that there should also be transparency about possible self-selection bias which might contribute to the variation in the findings.

We describe the limitations with regard to self-selection bias in the discussion on page 27: “Secondly, we invited individuals who participated in a cohort-sequential longitudinal study to participate in the daily diary study during the pandemic. While this allowed us to compare experiences and social behavior prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it could also have introduced self-selection bias and it limited our potential sample size.”.

However, there are several reasons why this study makes a valuable contribution to the literature. First, we used intensive daily diary assessments, therefore measurements within individuals were based on multiple assessments which increases robustness and reliability. Second, to draw reliable conclusions about changes in behavior, it is important that measurements are obtained prior to and during the pandemic, as is the case in our longitudinal project. Within-subject-, longitudinal designs enhance statistical power, which in our view outweighs the disadvantages of the smaller sample size. Third, this study obtained data in the first weeks of the pandemic, and therefore is unique in capturing the very early experiences of being in lockdown. All strengths of this study are now more clearly described on page 26 of the manuscript.

d. The possible role of experimenter demand for the hypothetical giving decisions should be discussed more thoroughly. What did the authors do to avoid experimenter demand effects and how would they expect it to affect the results? I do not think that the nature of the response to this point should affect chances for publication, but I do think it should be discussed in the study.

Answer: Based on your feedback as well as the feedback from reviewer 1 (comment 4), we tested whether the target effects in the Dictator Game still held when controlling for social desirability. We did this by adding the social desirability response set (SDRS-5) variable as a covariate to the repeated measures ANOVA within target (5 levels) as a within-subject variable. There was no main effect of social desirability on giving (p = .371), nor was there an interaction between social desirability and target (p = .223). In addition, calculating bivariate correlations between social desirability and giving to each of the five targets revealed no significant associations.

4) Pre- and post comparison

a. As far as I understand the authors use the observations from the last survey before the pandemic as a benchmark, rather than using all surveys before. The latter would allow the authors to show trends in the variables and then to see whether there is a break in the trend at the time of the pandemic. This would be a more convincing way of showing that there is a substantial change. Otherwise, it could be that there is a general trend in these variables which was not different in the pandemic when compared to before. So what I would like to see would be a figure showing all the raw averages, e.g., for empathetic concern, for each survey before the pandemic and then the average during the pandemic.

Answer: We agree with the reviewer that including all the surveys obtained before the pandemic would give the best indication of change in the variables of interest. This is indeed what we did, both in our analyses and figures. In the schedule below (see reply letter attachment), we show for each of the variables at what point in time they were obtained. In our analyses, we averaged over measurements obtained at T1.5 (i.e., over a maximum of 5 questionnaires). We also averaged over week 1, 2, and 3 with regard to measurements that were obtained during the pandemic on a daily basis (i.e., over a maximum of 5 questionnaires per week). Finally, we averaged over the measures that were obtained 4 times during the pandemic (i.e., perspective taking, empathic concern, general contributions to society; GCS). As such, the following distinct time points were used in analyses: T1, T1.5, T2, Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3 (for daily measures), pandemic average (for empathic concern, perspective taking, and GCS); Day 1 and Day 15 (for giving and SVO). Therefore, all figures and analyses already include all the pre-pandemic measurements that were obtained, not just the last survey before the pandemic.

5) Exploratory nature of the study

a. I think it is commendable that the authors mention that their study is exploratory in the introduction. I would go even further and clearly highlight this in the abstract. I think it is an interesting exploratory study and can be labelled as such. This will also allow the authors to present a more nuanced perspective on possible influences of the pandemic on adolescents.

Answer: We now mention the exploratory nature of the study in the abstract and introduction.

b. Hypotheses/expectations: The expected relationships the authors describe on page 6 seem slightly contradictory and need more justification. The authors first formulate very precise expectations with respect to the before and after lockdown comparisons, but then do not have expectations for the results from the diary study during the lockdown “due to the historical uniqueness of the COVID-19 pandemic”. In my view, the authors could either cut this part entirely or generate a new section where they discuss different plausible expectations and corresponding reasons more exhaustively. I would be happy with either change, I think for the reader the latter might be a bit more attractive, but I am not sure it is worth the additional time by the authors.

Answer: We thank the reviewer this suggestion. We have now cut this part entirely, also because we highlight the exploratory nature of the study throughout the manuscript and especially the introduction.

6) Attrition: The authors should be more openly stating potential issues with attrition. Why are there many more females taking part? How could this affect the results? How is dropping out of the survey related to pre-pandemic levels of mood and empathetic concern? I do not think the results of this examination should affect the chances for publication, but I do think it is important to discuss these issues openly.

Answer: There are several factors that could explain the attrition in this study. First, the pandemic and lockdown resulted in many changes in the lives of adolescents and their parents, including home schooling, new family routines and online communication. The current study was not previously announced and required participants to sign up within the period of one-week time. This many have caused larger attrition than is typical in longitudinal studies.

Second, it is noteworthy that attrition was larger for boys than for girls. There is currently no explanation for this difference but it is worth noting that other pandemic studies have also shown more female than male participations (Branas-Garza et al., 2020; Fried, Papanikolaou, & Epskamp, 2020; Kwong et al., 2020; Zettler et al., 2020).

Based on the reviewer’s suggestion we tested whether participants who dropped out differed from those wo did not in terms of mood and empathic concern. ANOVAs with participation in the COVID-19 daily diary study as a predictor (i.e., yes/no) revealed that there were no differences between the groups with regard to perspective taking, age, emotional support, dire prosociality, vigor, and tension on the first measurement (i.e., T1 in 2018 for most variables; T1.5 in 2018-2019 for vigor/tension). There was, however, a significant difference between the groups in empathic concern, F(1, 131) = 4.53, p = .035, such that participants who partook in the daily diary study scored higher (M = 2.68, SD = .59) than those who did not (M = 2.44, SD = .64). The same was observed for altruistic prosociality, F(1, 131) = 4.12, p = .044, such that participants who participated in the daily diary study scored higher (M = 4.28, SD = .59) than those who did not (M = 4.03, SD = .77). Note that these are the exact p-values, uncorrected for multiple comparisons. This suggests that the participants who participated in the daily diary study were slightly more empathic towards friends and slightly more altruistic prior to the pandemic, but did not show differences on the other variables.

We now discuss this in the manuscript, see page 31, “Secondly, we invited individuals who participated in a cohort-sequential longitudinal study to participate in the daily diary study during the pandemic. While this allowed us to compare experiences and social behavior prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it could also have introduced self-selection bias (e.g. inclusion of empathic and altruistic individuals) and it limited our potential sample size. The attrition was larger in males, a trend that is also observed in other studies (33,34,36,38). Future studies should employ large, diverse samples to test the robustness of these findings and to test for individual differences.”

7) Range of emotions/mood variables and corresponding measurements a. Why do the authors focus on tension and vigor only? Why are there no other mood variables included? The authors should justify the focus on these two.

Answer: We focused on tension and vigor for the following reasons. First of all, with regard to the three-week daily diary study, we aimed to minimize the time burden on participants as much as possible. Due to these time constraints we decided to focus on vigor, as an indication of adolescent resiliency. Second, we focused on tension (also sometimes called tension-anxiety) as several studies have suggested that the pandemic (i.e., an uncertain and frightening time), as well as social isolation, can increase feelings of tension and anxiety (Orben, Tomova, & Blakemore, 2020).

We have made our justification for choosing these two mood variables more clearly in the manuscript, see pages 14-15, “Although the original questionnaire included more emotions than vigor and tension, we decided to focus on these subscales as we aimed to focus on a positive emotion (vigor) to get an indication of adolescent resiliency, and a negative emotion (tension) as prior studies have suggested increases in adolescent tension and anxiety as a result of the pandemic (2).”

8) Standard errors

a. The authors should give details on how they compute standard errors. Do they take into account that they have correlations within individuals in the error terms over time? In case the authors do not account for this they should do so for the revision and present all results with corresponding standard errors (often referred to as cluster robust standard errors).

Answer: This is a valid concern but for the current exploratory study we made use of repeated measures ANOVAs in SPSS using ‘General Linear Model � Repeated Measures’ rather than mixed linear models. This analysis accounts for the within-subjects nature (i.e., dependency/relatedness of data within individuals) of the data, but does not calculate cluster robust standard errors. We agree that with larger sample sizes mixed linear models are a better solution, particularly for disentangling general developmental patterns from individual differences in growth trajectories, and we recommend this on page 27: “Sixth, the current study accounted for dependence of observations by using Repeated Measures ANOVAs. Future studies with larger sample sizes should employ mixed linear models to disentangle general developmental patterns from individual differences in growth trajectories.”

Minor concerns:

1) The authors should discuss their results on emotional support given that the measure includes questions strongly related to in-person meetings with friends. I think this is no problem, but I would like to see more on this.

Answer: We apologize for this confusion. The question that we used in Dutch actually was ‘Last day, I did my best to carve out time for friends instead of how we translated it to English in the first version of our manuscript: to spend time with friends. We now adjusted this, such that the question pertains to carving out time for friends, which does not necessitate in-person meetings.

2) I would like to see more explanation on Table 2 and its interpretation. At the moment it is very cursory. Some of the results seem at odds with the texts where the authors state that the results underscore the robustness of the giving pattern, but when one looks at the table the correlations seem not very high given the short amount of time between the surveys and when compared to correlations across time in other studies on prosociality.

Answer: Giving to the various targets on day 1 shows correlations in the range of .19** - .57** with giving to the same target on day 15, with the exception of the friend (n.s. correlation). To our knowledge, most studies examining within-subject correlations of Dictator Game giving over time have focused mostly on giving to unknown, anonymous others (Baumert, Schlösser & Schmitt, 2014; Haesevoets, Reinders Folmer & Van Hiel, 2015). These studies, in which multiple dictator games were administered in one sitting, revealed correlation estimates in the range of .70 - .91. The relatively lower correlations in this study could be related to time-related variability in perceptions of the target. For example, adolescents could have received new information about certain targets, or could have had new experiences with certain targets. This might also explain why there was no significant associations for the friend over time: it is possible that adolescents thought of a different friend across time or that their relationship changed over the course of three weeks.

We adjusted the text in our manuscript on page 26: “The novel Dictator Games provided a reliable measure of giving as was shown by significant correlations across time (i.e., r’s .19-.57), although these correlations were lower than those reported in studies where Dictator Games to anonymous others were repeatedly administered in the same sitting (i.e., r’s .70-.91). The only target for which giving was not significantly correlated over time was the friend, which was also the target that showed age-related differences at the final time point. It is also possible that adolescents thought of a different friend across time points or that their relationship changed over the course of three weeks. The correlations over time for the other targets may also have been influenced by time-related variability in perceptions of the targets, especially as these measures were taken in the first weeks of the pandemic.”

3) It would be good to have the distribution of key variables shown in histograms in the supplementary material.

Answer: We included histograms of the key variables in S4 (Supplement 4).

4) “Even though it is possible to discern general patterns of adolescents’ giving to different targets, prior research has shown that not all adolescents are prone to give to others.” This sentence seems a bit contradictory, I would rewrite it.

Answer: We changed this sentence into: “Despite the general trend that adolescents adjust their levels of giving to the familiarity of a target, there are marked individual differences in how much adolescents give.”

5) NA in dictator giving: I would be interested in seeing the correlation of contribution to society with NA in the giving game to understand whether NA basically means less prosocial.

Answer: We assume that NA in dictator giving stands for giving nothing to the other (i.e., not applicable). This happened only in trials where the target was an unfamiliar other. To test the reviewer’s suggestion, we recoded DG giving on day 1 to an unfamiliar other into no giving (0) or other (1). An ANOVA revealed no differences between these groups with regard to their general contributions to society, p = .660.

6) There are a number of other studies on prosociality and COVID-19 focusing on adults that should be referred to in the study:

- Branas-Garza et al. “Exposure to the Covid-19 pandemic and generosity in southern Spain”

- Cappelen et al. “Solidarity and Fairness in Times of Crisis”

- Zettler et al. “Individual differences in accepting personal restrictions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a Danish adult sample.

- Campos-Mercade et al. “Prosociality predicts health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic”

- Everett et al. “The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

- Bilancini et al “The effect of norm-based messages on reading and understanding COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules”

Answer: We thank the reviewer for pointing us towards these studies on the links between prosociality and COVID-19 in adults. We incorporated all of these studies into our manuscript:

Banas-Garza et al. & Cappelen et al.: “In contrast to opportunities for prosocial actions, which declined during the pandemic, we found no pre- to peri-pandemic changes in general contributions to society, social value orientation and altruistic and dire prosociality. Our findings suggest no changes in general prosocial tendencies towards unfamiliar others or society as a whole, only a decline in concrete daily prosocial actions towards familiar others (i.e., friends). Interestingly, recent studies in adults suggest that during the pandemic there is a shift towards pandemic-specific prosocial behaviors. For example, these studies have demonstrated that the crisis makes individuals more likely to prioritize society’s problems over their own, but less willing to give to non-COVID-19 related causes (36,37). This interpretation also fits with our finding that Dictator Game giving is higher for COVID-19 related targets. Future studies should aim to replicate this finding in both adults and adolescents and examine whether this shift persists further into and after the pandemic.”

Zettler et al., Campos-Mercade et al., Everett et al., and Bilancini et al.: “Another interesting direction for future research is to link these types of giving with COVID-19 related health behaviors and engagement with government regulations. Recent studies in adults have namely demonstrated various links of pandemic health behaviors with several forms of prosociality (38–41).”

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reply Letter PLOS ONE_Revision1_Final.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(95.8KB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349.r003

Decision Letter 1

Valerio Capraro

2 Sep 2020

PONE-D-20-19516R1

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. van de Groep,

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 17 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Valerio Capraro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The reviewers still have some minor suggestions before publication. Please address their comments at your earliest convenience. I am looking forward for the final version.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: I think the paper improved substantially since the last submission. The authors addressed most of my concerns. I have five suggestion for four changes:

1. “Aim of the study”

In the paper, the authors often write that the “aim of the study was to” i) investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents’ mood etc. and ii) investigate the effect of familiarity, need and deservingness on giving behavior. I think this formulation makes most readers belief that these two questions were the initial research questions. However, the study was designed with different research questions in mind (see pre-analysis plan). While the authors mention this in the paper, I think they should avoid saying that “the aim of the study was…” to avoid misunderstandings. (I would prefer, for example, the formulation “this study investigates…”)

2. Correction for multiple hypothesis testing

The authors address the concern of multiple hypothesis testing in a separate paragraph. They write that “most confidence should be placed in the results reported with p‐ values < .006 and <

.001, respectively.” The results section does not always follow this recommendation. For example, on p.18 they write ..“comparisons showed that adolescents displayed significantly higher levels of perspective taking during the COVID-19 pandemic (M = 2.74, SD = .63), compared to […] T2 (M = 2.59, SD = .59, p = .040).” Note that this difference is not significant after acounting for multiple hypothesis testing. I think this should be improved. (The authors could, for example, move the discussion of multiple hypothesis testing at the end of the result sections “research aim 1…” and “research aim 2…”, saying that most results are also significant with p‐ values <.006 and <.001, respectively.)

3. Small sample size

I am still worried about the small sample size of in between 36 and 53. While the authors can not solve this issue, it might be worth mentioning the sample size in the abstract. This would allow readers that only read the abstract to take the sample size into account when judging the paper.

4. Section “Peri-pandemic Individual Differences in Giving”

I don’t think the section on “Peri-pandemic Individual Differences in Giving: Influence of …” is very insightful, in particular due to the small sample size. I personally think the paper would improve by deleting this section (or, moving it to the Appendix).

5. I think the writing of the paper could be improved

Reviewer #2: Overview

The authors put great care in the revision, they reacted to my prior comments and rewrote the paper substantially. I do have some remaining and, in my view, relevant concerns detailed below.

1. Selection of individuals into answering different waves of the survey:

a. I would recommend adding the response of the authors on systematic attrition in response to my previous comments in the manuscript (second paragraph of the answer of the authors to the first report, point 6).

b. I would recommend showing the main figures capturing the results using two samples: Sample 1 includes all individuals are retained in all surveys (no attrition across points in time, only include people that participated in all surveys). Sample 2 includes every observation independent of whether they were answering all surveys.

2. Standard errors:

a. The authors should state explicitly what assumptions they make to compute the standard errors and corresponding arguments for why these assumptions hold in their data. As far as I understand it, the current analysis assumes that within individual correlations in error terms have the same correlation structure across individuals (that is, errors are independent across individuals, but have a similar/the same correlation within individuals). This may not be the case in the data. In any case, the authors should argue why the assumptions they use to compute standard errors / t-values are reasonable. I also think that the authors should relax the assumptions if they are very restrictive and show the corresponding results (e.g., if the above statement on the error structure applies, what happens if the authors assume that the within-individual dependency of errors are not identical across individuals?).

3. Number of emotions:

a. The authors now mention in the text that they only focused on two emotions in the follow-up questionnaires: “Although the original questionnaire included more emotions than vigor and tension, we decided to focus on these subscales as we aimed to focus on a positive emotion (vigor) to get an indication of adolescent resiliency, and a negative emotion (tension) as prior studies have suggested increases in adolescent tension and anxiety as a result of the pandemic (2).” This sentence is not clear to me. It sounds like the authors had more questions in the questionnaire they ended up administering, but I had the impression the authors only included questions on vigor and tension in the questionnaire in the follow-ups. Could the authors clarify which one of these applied? If only vigor and tension were included in the follow-up questionnaires this should be more explicitly stated. If more emotions were collected, this should be added to the statement.

Minor points: The last sentence of the abstract could be sharpened. It seems a bit broad at the moment.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

PLoS One. 2020 Oct 7;15(10):e0240349. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349.r004

Author response to Decision Letter 1

23 Sep 2020

Editor:

The reviewers still have some minor suggestions before publication. Please address their comments at your earliest convenience. I am looking forward for the final version.

Answer: We thank the editor for the opportunity to revise our article ‘A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic’. Please find below our replies to the helpful comments we received.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer #1:

I think the paper improved substantially since the last submission. The authors addressed most of my concerns. I have five suggestion for four changes:

1. “Aim of the study”

Answer: We completely agree and adjusted our wording throughout the manuscript.

2. Correction for multiple hypothesis testing

The authors address the concern of multiple hypothesis testing in a separate paragraph. They write that “most confidence should be placed in the results reported with p‐ values < .006 and <.001, respectively.” The results section does not always follow this recommendation. For example, on p.18 they write ..“comparisons showed that adolescents displayed significantly higher levels of perspective taking during the COVID-19 pandemic (M = 2.74, SD = .63), compared to […] T2 (M = 2.59, SD = .59, p = .040).” Note that this difference is not significant after acounting for multiple hypothesis testing. I think this should be improved. (The authors could, for example, move the discussion of multiple hypothesis testing at the end of the result sections “research aim 1…” and “research aim 2…”, saying that most results are also significant with p‐ values <.006 and <.001, respectively.)

Answer: We adhered to this suggestion and now mention the correction for multiple hypothesis testing and its implications at the end of the relevant result sections, see p. 19 and p. 20-21.

3. Small sample size

Answer: We now mention the sample size (with and without attrition) in the abstract.

4. Section “Peri-pandemic Individual Differences in Giving”

Answer: We deleted this section and mention in the discussion that future studies should employ larger sample sizes to study individual differences.

5. I think the writing of the paper could be improved

Answer: We re-read our paper and improved the writing, also based on feedback from a native speaker.

Reviewer #2:

Overview

The authors put great care in the revision, they reacted to my prior comments and rewrote the paper substantially. I do have some remaining and, in my view, relevant concerns detailed below.

1. Selection of individuals into answering different waves of the survey:

Answer: We included the response to this comment in the manuscript, see page 26-27: “Second, we invited adolescents enrolled in a cohort-sequential longitudinal study to participate in the daily diary study during the pandemic. While this allowed us to compare experiences and social behavior prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it could have introduced self-selection bias (e.g. inclusion of empathic and altruistic individuals) and it limited our potential sample size. There are several factors that could explain the attrition in this study. First, the pandemic and lockdown resulted in many changes in the lives of adolescents and their parents, including home schooling, new family routines and online communication. The current study was performed ad hoc and required participants to sign up within the period of one week. This may have caused larger attrition than is typical in longitudinal studies. Second, it is noteworthy that attrition was larger for males than for females. There is currently no explanation for this difference, but it is worth noting that other pandemic studies have also shown higher participation of females compared to males [34,35,37,39]. To investigate the extent to which self-selection bias influenced our results, we examined whether adolescents who did not participate in the daily diary study differed from those who did, see S8. These analyses showed that adolescents who participated in the daily diary study showed slightly higher pre-pandemic levels of empathic concern and altruism, but did not differ in terms of mood, perspective-taking, age, and dire prosociality. Future studies should employ large, diverse samples to test the robustness of our findings and to test for individual differences (e.g., in giving)”.

Details regarding these analyses are provided in supplement 8.

Answer: We thank the reviewer for this suggestion and have changed the main figures to include the sample without attrition (i.e., only including individuals who show no attrition over time) and the sample with attrition (i.e., including all available data per time point).

2. Standard errors:

Answer: We thank the reviewer for further explaining this point about standard errors. Based on a literature search we now see that RM ANOVAs are relatively inflexible in modeling within-person correlations and that this can lead to biased and less-precise estimates when correlations are unequal across repeated measures (Muth, Bales, Hinde, Maninger, Mendoza, & Ferrer, 2016). This is especially true for small sample sizes, where standard errors are inherently larger. Based on the reviewers’ suggestions, we now performed analyses using generalized estimating equations (GEE). This analysis is suitable for small samples, better equipped to deal with missing data at certain time points, and allows for various types of correlation matrices.

For each variable of interest for which we examined time effects, we inspected which correlation structure provided the best goodness of fit as indicated by the lowest QIC value. Specifically, we tested whether each model was best described by 1) an independent correlation matrix (i.e., zero correlation over time), 2) an exchangeable correlation matrix (i.e., constant correlation over time), 3) an autoregressive correlation matrix (i.e., diminishing correlation over time), and 4) an unstructured correlation matrix (i.e., a freely estimated correlation without constraints. The best fitting model per analysis is mentioned in the manuscript (p. 17 – 20) and further described in S7.

As discussed in Muth et al. (2016): “GEE models are robust to the misspecification of the correlations structure (Zeger & Liang, 1986). Additionally, selecting robust standard errors (Huber/White Sandwich Estimators; as opposed to conventional standard errors) will allow the estimates to be valid even in the event of misspecification of the correlation structure (StataCorp, 2003).” Therefore, we now report robust standard errors throughout the manuscript. Results using GEE models were highly similar to results previously obtained using repeated measures ANOVAs. Nonetheless, as GEE models are more robust and flexible, we decided to report the GEE results in the main text of the manuscript.

3. Number of emotions:

Answer: Indeed, we measured only vigor and tension in the daily diary study, whereas we measured all emotions of the original POMS questionnaire at T1.5. This is now emphasized on page 14: “To measure mean levels and fluctuations in vigor and tension, we used the Profiles of Mood States (POMS; [23]). Although the original questionnaire includes more emotions than vigor and tension, these were not measured during the daily diary study (i.e., at T1.5 we did include all emotions as measured by the POMS). We decided to focus only on vigor and tension subscales in the daily diary study to shorten this study’s length and minimize pressure for participants. We included a positive emotion (vigor) to get an indication of adolescent resiliency, and a negative emotion (tension) as prior studies have suggested increases in adolescent tension and anxiety as a result of the pandemic [2].”

Minor points: The last sentence of the abstract could be sharpened. It seems a bit broad at the moment.

Answer: We changed to last sentences of the abstract to: “This suggests that during the pandemic need and deservedness had a greater influence on adolescent giving than familiarity. Overall, this study suggests detrimental effects of the first weeks of lockdown on adolescents’ empathic concern and opportunities for prosocial actions, which are important predictors of healthy socio-emotional development and resilience. Conversely, adolescents also showed marked resilience and a willingness to benefit others as a result of the lockdown, as evidenced by improved perspective taking and mood, and high sensitivity to need and deservedness in giving to others.”

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE_RevisionSeptember2020_Replyletter_KZ_SvdG.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(21.2KB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349.r005

Decision Letter 2

Valerio Capraro

25 Sep 2020

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

PONE-D-20-19516R2

Dear Dr. van de Groep,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Valerio Capraro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0240349.r006

Acceptance letter

Valerio Capraro

30 Sep 2020

PONE-D-20-19516R2

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Dear Dr. van de Groep:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Valerio Capraro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

S1 Fig. Age and gender distributions of the daily diary sample.

(TIF)

Click here for additional data file.^{(69.7KB, tif)}

S1 File. Details regarding statistical analyses, including assumption checks.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(15.1KB, docx)}

S2 File. Results for other measures assessed during the daily diary study.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(13.3KB, docx)}

S3 File. Histograms of key variables.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(2.7MB, docx)}

S4 File. Overview and copies of all used and developed questionnaires in English.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(168.8KB, docx)}

S5 File. Overview and copies of all used and developed questionnaires in Dutch.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(140.6KB, docx)}

S6 File. Details on GEE analyses.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(27.1KB, docx)}

S7 File. Attrition: Did participants who decided not to participate in the daily diary study differ from those who did participate?.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(13KB, docx)}

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reply Letter PLOS ONE_Revision1_Final.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(95.8KB, docx)}

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE_RevisionSeptember2020_Replyletter_KZ_SvdG.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(21.2KB, docx)}

Data Availability Statement

The data are available at DOI 10.25397/eur.12783161.

[pone.0240349.ref001] 1.Crone EA, Dahl RE. Understanding adolescence as a period of social–affective engagement and goal flexibility. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2012. September;13(9):636–50. 10.1038/nrn3313 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref002] 2.Orben A, Tomova L, Blakemore S-J. The effects of social deprivation on adolescent development and mental health. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2020. June;S2352464220301863. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref003] 3.van Hoorn J, Fuligni AJ, Crone EA, Galván A. Peer influence effects on risk-taking and prosocial decision-making in adolescence: insights from neuroimaging studies. Curr Opin Behav Sci. 2016. August 1;10:59–64. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref004] 4.Blakemore S-J. The social brain in adolescence. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2008. April;9(4):267–77. 10.1038/nrn2353 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref005] 5.van de Groep S, Zanolie K, Crone EA. Giving to Friends, Classmates, and Strangers in Adolescence. J Res Adolesc. 2020;30(S2):290–7. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref006] 6.Crone EA. Considerations of Fairness in the Adolescent Brain. Child Dev Perspect. 2013;7(2):97–103. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref007] 7.Fuligni AJ. The need to contribute during adolescence. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2019;14(3):331–43. 10.1177/1745691618805437 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref008] 8.Crone EA, Fuligni AJ. Self and others in adolescence. Annu Rev Psychol. 2020;71:447–69. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref009] 9.Van Bavel JJ, Baicker K, Boggio PS, Capraro V, Cichocka A, Cikara M, et al. Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nat Hum Behav. 2020;1–12. 10.1038/s41562-020-0818-9 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref010] 10.Cacioppo JT, Hawkley LC, Thisted RA. Perceived Social Isolation Makes Me Sad: Five Year Cross-Lagged Analyses of Loneliness and Depressive Symptomatology in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study. Psychol Aging. 2010. June;25(2):453–63. 10.1037/a0017216 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref011] 11.Matthews GA, Tye KM. Neural mechanisms of social homeostasis. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2019;1457(1):5–25. 10.1111/nyas.14016 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref012] 12.Capraro V. The dual-process approach to human sociality: A review. Available SSRN 3409146. 2019;

[pone.0240349.ref013] 13.Masten AS, Motti-Stefanidi F. Multisystem Resilience for Children and Youth in Disaster: Reflections in the Context of COVID-19. Advers Resil Sci. 2020. June 1;1(2):95–106. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref014] 14.Yeager DS, Dahl RE, Dweck CS. Why Interventions to Influence Adolescent Behavior Often Fail but Could Succeed. Perspect Psychol Sci J Assoc Psychol Sci. 2018. Jan;13(1):101–22. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref015] 15.Güroğlu B, van den Bos W, Crone EA. Sharing and giving across adolescence: an experimental study examining the development of prosocial behavior. Front Psychol. 2014;5:291 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00291 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref016] 16.Kahneman D, Knetsch JL, Thaler RH. Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics. J Bus. 1986;59(4):S285–300. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref017] 17.Will G-J, Güroğlu B. A Neurocognitive Perspective on the Development of Social Decision-Making In: Reuter M, Montag C, editors. Neuroeconomics [Internet]. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2016. [cited 2020 Jun 23]. p. 293–309. (Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics). Available from: 10.1007/978-3-642-35923-1_15 [DOI] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref018] 18.Asscheman JS, He J, Koot S, Buil JM, Krabbendam L, van Lier PAC. Classroom peer preferences and the development of sharing behavior with friends and others. Int J Behav Dev. 2020. March 25;0165025420911094. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref019] 19.Overgaauw S, Güroğlu B, Rieffe C, Crone EA. Behavior and Neural Correlates of Empathy in Adolescents. Dev Neurosci. 2014;36(3–4):210–9. 10.1159/000363318 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref020] 20.Engel C. Dictator games: A meta study. Exp Econ. 2011;14(4):583–610. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref021] 21.Davis MH. Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1983;44(1):113. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref022] 22.Blankenstein NE, Telzer EH, Do KT, van Duijvenvoorde ACK, Crone EA. Behavioral and Neural Pathways Supporting the Development of Prosocial and Risk-Taking Behavior Across Adolescence. Child Dev. 2020. May;91(3):e665–81. 10.1111/cdev.13292 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref023] 23.Wald F, Mellenbergh G. De verkorte versie van de nederlandse vertaling van de Profile of Mood States (POMS). Ned Tijdschr Psychol. 1990; [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref024] 24.Carlo G, Hausmann A, Christiansen S, Randall BA. Sociocognitive and behavioral correlates of a measure of prosocial tendencies for adolescents. J Early Adolesc. 2003;23(1):107–34. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref025] 25.Murphy RO, Ackermann KA, Handgraaf M. Measuring Social Value Orientation [Internet]. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network; 2011. December [cited 2020 Aug 6]. Report No.: ID 1804189. Available from: https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1804189 [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref026] 26.Muth C, Bales KL, Hinde K, Maninger N, Mendoza SP, Ferrer E. Alternative Models for Small Samples in Psychological Research. Educ Psychol Meas. 2016. February;76(1):64–87. 10.1177/0013164415580432 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref027] 27.Bonferroni correction online. [Internet]. [cited 2020 Aug 11]. Available from: https://www.quantitativeskills.com/sisa/calculations/bonfer.htm

[pone.0240349.ref028] 28.Sankoh AJ, Huque MF, Dubey SD. Some comments on frequently used multiple endpoint adjustment methods in clinical trials. Stat Med. 1997;16(22):2529–42. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref029] 29.McDonald NM. In Acerbi A, Lombo J. A, & Sanguineti J. J (Eds), Free will, Emotions, and Moral Actions: Philosophy and Neuroscience in Dialogue. IF-Press; In press.: 36. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref030] 30.Brooks S, Amlôt R, Rubin GJ, Greenberg N. Psychological resilience and post-traumatic growth in disaster-exposed organisations: overview of the literature. BMJ Mil Health. 2020. February 1;166(1):52–6. 10.1136/jramc-2017-000876 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref031] 31.“Geluk onder druk?” voor professionals [Internet]. UNICEF. 2020 [cited 2020 Jun 23]. Available from: https://www.unicef.nl/ons-werk/nederland/geluk-onder-druk-een-onderzoek-over-maar-vooral-met-jongeren/professionals

[pone.0240349.ref032] 32.Salmela-Aro K, Tynkkynen L. Gendered pathways in school burnout among adolescents. J Adolesc. 2012. August 1;35(4):929–39. 10.1016/j.adolescence.2012.01.001 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref033] 33.Bonanno GA. Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? Am Psychol. 2004;59(1):20 10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.20 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref034] 34.Fried EI. Mental Health and Social Contact During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study. 2020. April 24 [cited 2020 Jun 23]; Available from: https://psyarxiv.com/36xkp/ [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref035] 35.Mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in two longitudinal UK population cohorts | medRxiv [Internet]. [cited 2020 Jun 23]. Available from: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.16.20133116v1 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]

[pone.0240349.ref036] 36.Wang CS, Lee M, Ku G, Leung AK -y. The Cultural Boundaries of Perspective-Taking: When and Why Perspective-Taking Reduces Stereotyping: Pers Soc Psychol Bull [Internet]. 2018. February 28 [cited 2020 Jun 23]; Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167218757453 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref037] 37.Branas-Garza P, Jorrat DA, Alfonso A, Espin AM, García T, Kovarik J. Exposure to the Covid-19 pandemic and generosity [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. April [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/6ktuz [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref038] 38.Cappelen AW, Falch R, Sørensen EØ, Tungodden B. Solidarity and Fairness in Times of Crisis. SSRN Electron J [Internet]. 2020. [cited 2020 Aug 5]; Available from: https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=3600806 [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref039] 39.Zettler I, Schild C, Lilleholt L, Kroencke L, Utesch T, moshagen morten, et al. The role of personality in COVID-19 related perceptions, evaluations, and behaviors: Findings across five samples, nine traits, and 17 criteria [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. March [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/pkm2a [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref040] 40.Campos-Mercade P, Meier A, Schneider F, Wengström E. Prosociality Predicts Health Behaviors during the COVID-19 Pandemic. SSRN Electron J [Internet]. 2020. [cited 2020 Aug 5]; Available from: https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=3604094 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref041] 41.Everett JAC, Colombatto C, Chituc V, Brady WJ, Crockett M. The effectiveness of moral messages on public health behavioral intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. March [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/9yqs8 [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref042] 42.Bilancini E, Boncinelli L, Capraro V, Celadin T, Di Paolo R. The effect of norm-based messages on reading and understanding COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules [Internet]. PsyArXiv; 2020. May [cited 2020 Aug 5]. Available from: https://osf.io/7863g [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref043] 43.Poulin F, Chan A. Friendship stability and change in childhood and adolescence. Dev Rev. 2010. September 1;30(3):257–72. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref044] 44.Franzen A, Pointner S. The external validity of giving in the dictator game. Exp Econ. 2013. June 1;16(2):155–69. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0240349.ref045] 45.What motivates repayment? Neural correlates of reciprocity in the Trust Game | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience | Oxford Academic [Internet]. [cited 2020 Jun 23]. Available from: https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/4/3/294/1633442 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]

[pone.0240349.ref046] 46.Galizzi MM, Navarro-Martinez D. On the external validity of social preference games: a systematic lab-field study. Manag Sci. 2019;65(3):976–1002. [Google Scholar]

PERMALINK

A daily diary study on adolescents’ mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Suzanne van de Groep

Kiki Zanolie

Kayla H Green

Sophie W Sweijen

Eveline A Crone

Roles

Abstract

Introduction

Pre- to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

Peri-pandemic giving to others

The current study

Method

Participants

Fig 1. Overview of the longitudinal Brainlinks study, aimed at investigating the predictors and consequences of being prosocial in adolescence.

Procedure

Daily diary study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic

Questionnaire data obtained before the COVID-19 pandemic

Materials

1. Pre-to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

2. Peri-pandemic familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on giving

Results

1. Pre-to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

Fig 2. Levels of perspective-taking and empathic concern at T1, T2, and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fig 3. Levels of opportunities for prosocial actions (emotional support) prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fig 4. Levels of vigor and tension prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Peri-pandemic familiarity-, need-, and deservedness-effects on giving

Giving toward different targets during the COVID-19 pandemic

Fig 5. Giving to an unfamiliar peer, friend, individual with a poor immune system, individual with COVID-19, and doctor working on a hospital.

Table 2. Pearson correlations between age and giving to different targets on day 1 and 15, as measured during the daily diaries study.

Discussion

Pre- to peri-pandemic changes in mood, empathy, and prosocial behavior

Peri-pandemic giving to others

Strengths, limitations, and recommendations for future research

Conclusion

Supporting information

Acknowledgments

Data Availability

Funding Statement

References

Decision Letter 0

Valerio Capraro

Roles

Author response to Decision Letter 0

Decision Letter 1

Valerio Capraro

Roles

Author response to Decision Letter 1

Decision Letter 2

Valerio Capraro

Roles

Acceptance letter

Valerio Capraro

Roles

Associated Data

Supplementary Materials

Data Availability Statement

ACTIONS

PERMALINK

RESOURCES

Similar articles

Cited by other articles

Links to NCBI Databases