Adolescent Acts of Kindness Intervention

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Inflammation; Mental Health Wellness 1

Treatments: Behavioral: Daily Reports; Behavioral: Other-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention; Behavioral: Self-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03322397

17-001018

Details and patient eligibility

About

Adolescents will complete a 4-week intervention, during which they will either complete a kind act for others, complete a kind act for themselves, or report their daily activities three days per week. Psychological and physiological measures will be indexed before and after the intervention.

Full description

Stress and early adversity have been found to influence immune function via enhanced expression of the conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA) genetic profile. Expression of this genetic profile was reduced in adults who completed a prosocial behavior intervention. This project aims to implement this intervention in adolescents. 90 high school students will be recruited and assigned to one of three groups (30/group). Participants will either conduct 3 acts of kindness for themselves, conduct 3 acts of kindness for others, or report about their day 3 times per week for 4 weeks. During this intervention, they will receive text messages 3 days per week instructing them to complete their respective act. Participants will provide a brief description of this act that evening, as well as complete brief surveys at the end of the week for each week of the intervention. Participants will come into the lab twice, once before and once after the 4-week intervention. During these lab sessions participants will complete survey measures, have their heart rate measured, and have a blood draw conducted by a trained phlebotomist. Participants' parents will also complete a brief survey to provide demographic information and an idea of what prosocial behaviors participants witnessed in their home. The investigators will use these data to assess the effects of prosocial behavior on health and the psychological mechanisms underlying these effects. At the second study visit, participants will be given the opportunity to donate part of their study payment to a charity to measure prosociality. Any donations will be vetted with the psychology department's accounting group prior to making any donations in the university's name. Scott Monatlik, Director, Tax and Information Practices, at [e-mail] or [phone] will be contacted and information regarding the appropriate steps to take to ensure that the donation is made to an acceptable charity prior to any donations. Actual helping behavior (donations) is measured to provide an ecologically valid experimental evaluation of prosociality rather than traditional metrics of computerized, fictional giving. Conceptual frameworks from developmental and health psychology guide the hypothesis that prosocial behavior will influence adolescents.

Enrollment: 97 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 14 to 17 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Between the ages of 14-17

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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97 participants in 3 patient groups

Kindness to Others

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will complete the 'Other-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention' by performing acts of kindness for others. They be asked to complete 3 kind acts for others throughout the week for 4 weeks. They will receive text messages three days per week (either Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday or Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) and will report on their kind act later that day.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Other-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention

Kindness to Self

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants will complete the 'Self-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention' by performing acts of kindness for themselves. They be asked to complete 3 kind acts for others throughout the week for 4 weeks. They will receive text messages three days per week (either Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday or Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) and will report on their kind act later that day.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Self-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention

Daily Report

Sham Comparator group

Description:

Participants will complete the 'Daily Reports' and be asked to report their daily activities throughout the week for 4 weeks. They will receive text messages three days per week (either Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday or Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) and will list activities from their day.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Daily Reports