Purposefulness and daily life in a pandemic: Predicting daily affect and physical symptoms during the first weeks of the COVID-19 response

Objective: Sense of purpose has been associated with greater health and well-being, even in daily contexts. However, it is unclear whether effects would hold in daily life during COVID-19, when people may have difficulty seeing a path towards their life goals.

Design: The current study investigated whether purposefulness predicted daily positive affect, negative affect, and physical symptoms. Participants (n = 831) reported on these variables during the first weeks of the COVID-19 response in North America.

Main outcome measures: Participants completed daily surveys asking them for daily positive events, stressors, positive affect, negative affect, physical symptoms, and purposefulness.

Results: Purposefulness at between- and within-person levels predicted less negative affect and physical symptoms, but more positive affect at the daily level. Between-person purposefulness interacted with positive events when predicting negative and positive affect, suggesting that purposeful people may be less reactive to positive events. However, between-person purposefulness also interacted with daily stressors, insofar that stressors predicted greater declines in positive affect for purposeful people.

Conclusion: Being a purposeful person holds positive implications for daily health and well-being, even during the pandemic context. However, purposefulness may hold some consequences unique to the COVID-19 context, which merit attention in future research.