Open AccessChanges in values and well-being amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland
Author(s) -
Agnieszka Bojanowska,
Łukasz D. Kaczmarek,
Maciej Kościelniak,
Beata Urbańska
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0255491
Subject(s) - eudaimonia , hedonism , pandemic , psychology , covid-19 , well being , affect (linguistics) , social psychology , demography , medicine , sociology , political science , communication , pathology , psychotherapist , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law
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.