During the COVID‐19 pandemic, families have experienced unprecedented financial and social disruptions. We studied the impact of preexisting psychosocial factors and pandemic‐related financial and social disruptions in relation to family well‐being among
This series of studies examined U.S. individuals' use of specific emotion regulation/coping strategies during the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, investigated the factor structure among strategies during this universally experienced stressor, and the extent to which these factors predicted engagement in COVID‐related health‐promoting behaviors. In Study 1, participants (
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10442243
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Social and Personality Psychology Compass
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 1751-9004
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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N = 4091 adolescents and parents during early summer 2020, participating in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSMStudy. Poorer family well‐being was linked to prepandemic psychosocial and financial adversity and was associated with pandemic‐related material hardship and social disruptions to routines. Parental alcohol use increased risk for worsening of family relationships, while a greater endorsement of coping strategies was mainly associated with overall better family well‐being. Financial and mental health support may be critical for family well‐being during and after a widespread crisis, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic. -
Huynh, Luu Duc (Ed.)Health behaviors that do not effectively prevent disease can negatively impact psychological wellbeing and potentially drain motivations to engage in more effective behavior, potentially creating higher health risk. Despite this, studies linking “moral foundations” (i.e., concerns about harm, fairness, purity, authority, ingroup, and/or liberty) to health behaviors have generally been limited to a narrow range of behaviors, specifically effective ones. We therefore explored the degree to which moral foundations predicted a wider range of not only effective but ineffective (overreactive) preventative behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, participants from Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States reported their engagement in these preventative behaviors and completed a COVID-specific adaptation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire during the pandemic peak. While differences occurred across countries, authority considerations consistently predicted increased engagement in both effective preventative behaviors but also ineffective overreactions, even when controlling for political ideology. By contrast, purity and liberty considerations reduced intentions to engage in effective behaviors like vaccination but had no effect on ineffective behaviors. Study 2 revealed that the influence of moral foundations on U.S participants’ behavior remained stable 5-months later, after the pandemic peak. These findings demonstrate that the impact of moral foundations on preventative behaviors is similar across a range of western democracies, and that recommendations by authorities can have unexpected consequences in terms of promoting ineffective—and potentially damaging—overreactive behaviors. The findings underscore the importance of moral concerns for the design of health interventions that selectively promote effective preventative behavior.more » « less
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Abstract Higher reactivity to stress exposure is associated with an increased tendency to appraise ambiguous stimuli as negative. However, it remains unknown whether tendencies to use emotion regulation strategies—such as cognitive reappraisal, which involves altering the meaning or relevance of affective stimuli—can shape individual differences regarding how stress affects perceptions of ambiguity. Here, we examined whether increased reappraisal use is one factor that can determine whether stress exposure induces increased negativity bias. In Study 1, healthy participants (
n = 43) rated the valence of emotionally ambiguous (surprised) faces before and after an acute stress or control manipulation and reported reappraisal habits. Increased negativity ratings were milder for stressed individuals that reported more habitual reappraisal use. In Study 2 (n = 97), we extended this investigation to real-world perceived stress before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that reappraisal tendency moderates the relationship between perceived stress and increased negativity bias. Collectively, these findings suggest that the propensity to reappraise determines negativity bias when evaluating ambiguity under stress. -
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Abstract Prosocial and health protective behaviors are critical to contain the COVID‐19 pandemic, yet adolescents have been difficult to engage. Attachment security promotes adolescents’ capacities to navigate stress, and influences prosocial and health behaviors. Drawing on a diverse sample of 202 adolescents (48% female; 47.5% Latinx) this study evaluated relations among attachment, mental health, and prosocial and health protective responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Attachment security (age 12) predicted adolescents’ (age 15) COVID‐19 prosocial (
f 2 = .201) and health protective behaviors (f 2 = .274) during the pandemic via smaller‐than‐expected increases in mental health symptoms above pre‐pandemic levels (age 14). Findings highlight the importance of attachment for supporting adolescents’ mental health responses to life stressors and promoting prosocial and health protective behaviors. -
Objective: Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) is a form of technology-facilitated sexual violence in which intimate photos or videos are nonconsensually taken, shared, and/or threatened to be shared. The shift to fully virtual social interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated a spike in IBSA victimization during this time, and—with many organizations functioning at limited capacity—survivors had limited resources available to them to manage the distress associated with victimization. The purpose of this study was to understand the coping strategies used by diverse survivors of IBSA during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Method: We conducted structured interviews using a trauma-informed approach. Using codebook thematic analysis, we analyzed the data from 36 survivors of IBSA during the pandemic (Mage = 31.01; two participants did not disclose age). The sample was diverse in terms of genders, races, and sexual orientations represented. Results: We identified five groups of coping strategies employed by participants: avoiding distressing feelings, reputational damage control, retaliatory sextortion, seeking emotional support, and pursuing justice. Many participants used multiple strategies to manage the distress associated with their IBSA victimization. Conclusions: Survivors of IBSA cope with their victimization in diverse ways, some of which have not been previously reported in coping strategies literature and may be unique to the experience of IBSA.more » « less
