Passion for Social Causes: The Benefits of Unpleasant Experiences for Psychological Well-being

To improve psychological well-being, it is important to understand the conditions under which
psychological well-being thrives. Traditionally, well-being has been conceptualized as high positive affect
(e.g., happiness) and low negative affect (e.g., anger). However, Juhl et al. (2017) proposed that there
are some situations characterized by negative affect that can be good for well-being because they also
help fulfil basic psychological needs (e.g., meaning in life, self-esteem, and social connectedness).
Further, they propose a list of situations typically associated with negative affect that can fulfil
psychological needs and summarized their claims in the Affectively-Negative Need-Fulfilment Model.
One potential affectively-negative, yet need-fulfilling, situation is 'Passion for Social Causes and Beliefs'.
This broadly defined situation includes social movements, collective action, protests, and
religious/political beliefs. Passion in such contexts can manifest in anger and frustration. However, these
situations may allow people to affirm their beliefs (meeting the need for meaning), take the moral high
ground (meeting the need for self-esteem), and stand in solidarity with others (meeting the need for
social connectedness).
No research has directly tested this model. In a series of studies, I will test (1) whether passion for social
causes is indeed a situation that is simultaneously characterized by negative affect and by the fulfilment
of the needs for meaning, self-esteem, and social connectedness, (2) whether people willingly place
themselves in such affectively-negative situations as a way to meet these needs and (3) whether such
negative situations buffer the negative psychology impact of threats to these needs.