Kindness as an Intervention for Student Social Interaction Anxiety, Resilience, Affect, and Mood

Poor mental health is a significant public health concern that disproportionally affects university students, compared to their community counterparts, and stress is a main culprit. Although privileged in terms of attending higher education, the stress-related inequity experienced among university students stems from "academic load, constant pressure to succeed, competition with peers, financial burdens, and peer, teacher or parental pressure". These stressors can trigger or exacerbate anxiety levels, which are on the rise among students. The most recent National College Health Assessment Survey, which included Canadian postsecondary institutions, showed a marked increase in student anxiety between 2013 to 2016. Although less studied than undergraduates, graduate students' mental health also is worrisome with over 60% feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, hopeless, and/or depressed nearly all of the time. It is imperative that evidence-informed approaches to enhance resilience and reduce the negative mental health experiences of undergraduate and graduate students be implemented and evaluated. Although improving resilience and overall mental health is a growing focus across campuses, current programming is clearly unable to address the concern in its entirety, and additional interventions are required.

An emerging and promising approach to promoting positive mental health and resilience among secondary students is performing acts of kindness. Arguably, performing acts of kindness improves mental health through the strengthening of psychological resilience. Resilience, as an outcome, is predicated on six underlying dimensions: health, collaboration, purpose, composure, reasoning, and tenacity. In terms of health and collaboration, a small classroom-based kindness pilot entailing logging acts of kindness by undergraduate students at Western University (UWO), found improvements in individual levels of wellbeing (i.e. confidence and decreased stress), perceptions of positive classroom culture, and classroom cohesion. Performing acts of kindness is correlated with happiness which results in a positive sense of purpose, increased composure, and improved reasoning and resilience. Moreover, the physiological effects are well-known as functional magnetic resonance images (fMRIs) show activation in the reward centres of the brain when subjects are engaged in acts of kindness. Despite the strong theoretical foundation that links acts of kindness with resilience, this area of research has yet to be sufficiently explored. To that end, the objective of this study is to assess the impact of engaging in deliberate acts of kindness on resilience (primary outcome); social interaction anxiety and affect (secondary outcomes); and mood (exploratory outcome) of undergraduate and graduate students at UWO.

Methods

Study Design

A longitudinal repeated-measures, mixed methods randomized control trial grounded in an interpretive description paradigm will be used. Interpretive description is an inductive analysis approach that creates ways of understanding phenomena yielding application-based implications for practice. Recruitment of 200 participants consisting of 150 full-time undergraduate and 50 graduate students, randomized to either the intervention (n=100) or control group (n=100) will be achieved via a mass email to all full-time students at UWO once ethical approval is obtained and the trial is registered. This sample size was selected considering two criteria: 1) based on our previous work in the area the sample size is feasible; and 2) from a power analysis using resilience as the primary outcome, a sample of 100 per group is sufficient to detect significant differences between groups (p < 0.05). Participants will be eligible if they are: (a) full-time undergraduate or graduate students at UWO and/or the affiliate schools (Kings, Brescia, Huron) and (b) English-speaking. Both intervention and control group participants will receive an email with access to a relaxation and stress management booklet from UWO's Wellness Education Centre. In addition, the intervention group will be asked to (1) complete and log/submit a minimum of three deliberate acts of kindness per day for one month, and (2) join the study-dedicated online site to connect with, support, and share experiences and ideas with each other around acts of kindness. Deliberate acts of kindness will be defined for participants as purposeful acts benefitting others that the others would presumably like.