Last week, Ph.D. student Kayla presented updated plans for her project titled Growing Toward the Common Good: Collective Action during COVID-19.
Kayla aims to develop an understanding of collective action behaviors as a predictor of action-focused growth and constructive PTG by studying how bystanders might promote collective action among their group for the benefit of society during a pandemic. Not only will the relationship between PTG and collective action behavior be examined, but the possibility of narcissism and optimism being indicators of illusory PTG will be explored. Her study will include a preliminary survey collecting data on individual differences, evaluation of collective behavior, and attitudes towards COVID-19 along with daily surveys collecting data concerning behavior during public outings (e.g. mask wearing, how many people present). She is hoping to recruit about 400 participants who have resided in the United States since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and are at least 18 years old.
It is predicted that participants who score high on the PTG scale will engage in more collective action interventions. She also predicts that people who have high PTG scores and do not engage in collective action interventions will reflect illusory growth and anticipates that narcissism and/or optimism could be influencing factors in this relationship. This project has the potential to help identify predicting factors of who will take part in collective action as a reflection of action-focused growth. It seems like this study will collect extremely rich and relevant data. We are very excited to see the outcomes! Amazing presentation, Kayla!
FF-PTG LAB 