MindCraft Challenges

John Gottman reports that improving friendship between romantic partners reduces negative interactions during conflict. Gottman teaches improving friendship as part of his marriage education program with multiple exercises, but there are simple everyday actions that people can take to build their friendships.

Challenge: Brenda O’Connell and her colleagues demonstrated that intentional gratitude and kindness towards friends can improve relationship quality. They asked people to either “Write and deliver a positive message (email, text, face-to-face) to someone in your social network (friend, family, colleague), thanking or praising them for something you are grateful for” or to engage in acts of kindness for someone in their social network at least 3 or 4 times in a week. Try this for yourself and see if those relationships improve.

Read More
Gottman’s assessment of interventions
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327698jfc0503_1
O’Connell’s friendship-building study
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1037860

Challenge: Follow Rachel Baumsteiger’s prosocial intervention steps:

• Learn about prosociality (we did this in class)>
• Elevation—Watch a prosocial story from ESPN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXVk5GBx-s
• Spend at least a minute each writing about:
• People you admire
• How you would change the world if you could
• 3-5 values (examples: courage, independence, discipline) that are meaningful to you
• Your imagined self in five years in your best possible future—describe what your life would be like
• A plan for how you could help others more over the next week
• Implement your plan. Take notes at the end of each day about how your prosocial actions impacted others. Were you more prosocial?

Read More
A Prosocial Elevation Intervention
https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2019.1639507
Elevation increases tedious helping
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609359882
Elevation makes violence less enjoyable
https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000214