Adolescent Acts of Kindness Intervention With Reflection

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Mental Health Wellness 1

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

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05267132

IRB#21-002091

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 others with a reflection component, or report their daily activities three days per week. Psychological measures will be indexed before and after the intervention.

Full description

There is growing policy and scientific interest in promoting the positive benefits of kindness and prosociality. This is particularly true for adolescents, whose psychological and social maturation offers fertile ground in which kindness can be seeded early in life with potentially positive effects on their psychological health. Much of the existing efforts have focused on large-scale community engagement and service-learning programs. Investigating less costly and time-intensive alternatives is necessary to broaden engagement and access. This project aims to implement one such effort with an enhanced acts of kindness intervention for adolescents. The enhancement incorporates existing evidence that requiring adolescents to reflect upon and savor their experience of helping others promotes the positive impact of such interventions. 120 high-school-aged youth will be recruited and assigned to one of three groups (40/group). Participants will either conduct a kind act for others, complete a kind act for others with a reflection component (enhanced condition), or report their daily activities three days 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 also complete a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire and participants' parents will complete a brief survey at the start of the study 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 psychological health. Conceptual frameworks from developmental psychology guide the hypothesis that prosocial behavior will influence adolescents.

Enrollment: 119 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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119 participants in 3 patient groups

Kindness to Others with Reflection

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will complete the 'Other-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention' by performing acts of kindness for others and will also complete a reflection component. They will 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. At the end of each intervention week, they will be asked to reflect upon their experience of performing kind acts for others.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Other-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention with Reflection

Kindness to Others

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants will complete the 'Other-Focused Acts of Kindness Intervention' by performing acts of kindness for others. They will 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

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