Basic Psychological Need-Satisfying Activities during the COVID-19 Outbreak

The rapidly spreading novel coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) worldwide may increase fear and stress, and has a cost for people's well-being and their motivation toward activities. In this study, we applied principles from Self-Determination Theory to develop and test activities to satisfy basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) to enhance the experience of need satisfaction, autonomous self-regulation, and subjective vitality, and to decrease the experience of need frustration, controlled self-regulation, amotivation, and perceived stress.

Using a 10-day experimental research design among an Iranian sample (N = 208, M_age  = 23.52, SD = 5.00), we randomly allocated participants to either an experimental (basic psychological need-satisfying activities intervention, n = 98) or a control (neutral comparison group, n = 110) condition.

Repeated measure ANCOVA showed that participants in the experimental condition reported greater psychological need satisfaction, autonomous self-regulation, subjective vitality, and lesser psychological need frustration, amotivation, and perceived stress than did participants in the control condition.

We conclude that the intervention was successful in helping participants enhance their motives and well-being and reduce their stress when life is surrounded by uncertainty and during social distancing restrictions.