Unlocking flourishing: Life awe fosters positive youth development during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the context of various risk factors that threaten adolescents' prosociality and well-being, life awe, which provides a broader perspective on life, may help to foster positive youth development. The current study aims to examine whether life awe is positively associated with adolescents' prosocial behavior and subjective well-being during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted two complementary studies to test our hypotheses using a mixed-methods approach. Study 1 analyzed 16,591 valid Weibo blogs from 12,498 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 20.69, SDage = 2.76; 74.08% female) posted in the COVID-19 pandemic (January 1, 2020-December 31, 2020). This study explored semantic associations among life awe, prosocial behavior, and subjective well-being in a real-world context. Study 2 involved two waves of longitudinal data from 2299 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 14.63, SDage = 1.62; 38.32% female) collected during the postpandemic period (October 2023-April 2024), providing longitudinal insights into these relationships. The results of two studies indicated that life awe was significantly and positively associated with adolescents' prosocial behavior and subjective well-being during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. By advancing empirical understanding of life awe, these findings suggest that life awe could serve as a novel target for interventions aimed at promoting positive youth development both during public crises such as pandemics and in everyday life.