Everyday kindness in times of COVID-19: restoring social connectedness and enhancing prosociality through online interventions. Rapid Response Covid-19 (European Association for Social Psychology - Funded)

Roughly half the world is on lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic. Physical distance prevents the spread of the virus, yet it brings along a sense of psychological isolation affecting individuals’ well-being and social functioning. We aim to test whether practicing everyday kindness (EK) increases social connectedness and thus constitutes an effective preventive measure against drawbacks of physical distancing both at the individual (e.g. isolation fatigue, and depressive symptoms) and at the social (e.g. increased self-focus and diminished prosociality) level. The practical outcome of our project will be a catalogue of pretested EK acts for short online interventions, easy to distribute and applicable to many contexts.