A Positive Empathy Intervention to Improve Well-being on Instagram

With more than half the global population on social media, there is a critical need to understand how to engage it in a way that improves rather than worsens user well-being. Here, we show that positive empathy is a promising tool. Participants who received brief positive empathy instructions before 10 minutes of browsing their own Instagram feed showed greater affective well-being (Studies 1-4) and life satisfaction (Study 4) at post-test relative to participants who were instructed to browse as usual. The positive empathy intervention showed an average effect size on well-being of about a quarter of a standard deviation (mean Cohen’s d = 0.25). We included unique active-control groups in each study. We found using positive empathy on social media was about as beneficial to well-being as watching a nature video (Study 1, N = 298) and was better than instructions to focus on positive content (Study 2, N = 302), empathize with all emotions (Study 3, N = 301) or reappraise one’s own emotions (Study 4, N = 426). We used structural equation modeling to demonstrate the effect of the intervention on subjective well-being is mediated by changes in positive emotion sharing, appreciative joy, and self-compassion. These experiences form a latent factor we term positive empathy. Our results show that a brief intervention successfully manipulates positive empathy on Instagram, which increases well-being.