Changes in values and well-being amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland.

Agnieszka Bojanowska,Beata Urbańska,Maciej Koscielniak,Łukasz D Kaczmarek,Brecht Devleesschauwer

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255491

Abstract

COVID-19 caused a global change in the lifestyles of people around the world. It provided a unique opportunity to examine how external circumstances impact two crucial aspects of functioning relating to "who I am" (values) and "how I feel" (well-being). Participants (N = 215) reported their values and subjective and eudaimonic well-being, nine months before the first lockdown in Poland and two weeks and four weeks into the first lockdown. We observed increased valuing of self-direction, security, conformity, humility, caring, and universalism and a decrease in valuing hedonism. Individuals experienced decreased subjective and eudaimonic well-being, with women responding with stronger negative affect intensity relative to men. Finally, we identified that individuals who were more open to change before the COVID-19 pandemic responded with higher eudaimonic well-being two weeks into lockdown relative to their less open to change peers. This study is unique in that it shows that well-being and individually held values are flexible and adaptive systems that react to external circumstances such as global critical events.

Highlights

The dynamic of well-being and individual value hierarchies have been the focus of psychological research for several decades
The COVID-19 lockdown restrictions introduced in many countries to prevent the spread of the virus provided a unique opportunity to study the impact of a severe global threat on people’s psychological functioning
We found that the participants perceived the COVID-19 health concern as very high (M = 8.18; SD = 1.89)

Summary

Introduction

The dynamic of well-being and individual value hierarchies have been the focus of psychological research for several decades. These two individual differences reflect significant aspects of human psychological functioning and are intertwined [1]. We aimed to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic was related to changes in values [4], subjective well-being [5], and eudaimonic well-being [6]. We present how personal values and well-being changed two and four weeks into the lockdown-like restrictions introduced in Poland on March 14th, 2020, relative to nine months earlier

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