Report on the topic: “Helping your neighbor and the inner circle as a factor of subjective well-being: The role of basic psychological needs."

On October 17, 2023, the next seminar of the Center for Sociocultural Research of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, “Culture Matters,” took place. As part of this seminar, E.A. Nastina, junior researcher at the Ronald Franklin Inglehart Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, and I.F. Devyatko, professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Department of Analysis of Social Institutions, spoke with a report on the topic: “Helping your neighbor and the inner circle as a factor of subjective well-being: The role of basic psychological needs."
 
This report examined how helping one's immediate and extended circle influences subjective well-being, as well as the role that basic psychological needs play in this mechanism. Two studies (N = 127 and N = 305) were conducted to test hypotheses about the differential impact of types of care. The first study found that acts of kindness toward family and friends led to increased satisfaction of the relatedness and morality needs (relative to the control group), while helping strangers only satisfied the latter. The second study initially failed to find a relationship between prosocial behavior and subjective well-being, but when controlling for satisfaction of the need for competence, helping both types of beneficiaries led to increased well-being at the event level.