Volunteering Impacts on Volunteers: Immediate Positive Emotional-Cognitive Effects and Longer-Term Happiness/Weil-Being Effects

Abstract

As a companion/complement to Handbook Chapter 52, this chapter further reviews research on the positive consequences of volunteering for the volunteer as a participant or member in voluntary membership associations (MAs) or in volunteer service programs (VSPs; see Handbook Chapter 15). Some consequences of volunteering are immediate, as positive felt affects/emotions and positive cognitions/perceptions from an activity, reviewed here in Section D, 1. Other consequences, more commonly the focus of volunteer impact research, are longer term, over days, months, and years. The latter are mainly reviewed in Chapter 52, but also reviewed partly here in Section D, 2, for longer-term happiness and well-being effects.