A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world.

Appraisal shifts during reappraisal

“…Appraisals are constructive in the sense that they relate a representation of a situation, that is its construal, to motivational representations of current concerns, that is a goal set (Moors, 2010). The constructiveness of appraisal implies that reappraisal arises from changing the construal (reappraisal through reconstrual) and changing the goal set (reappraisal through repurposing; Uusberg et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2021). This implication was not directly tested in the present research but it is relevant for interpreting some of the findings.…”

Factors Related to Women’s Psychological Distress during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Two-Wave Longitudinal Study

“…Furthermore, the present results are significant, considering that a recent study demonstrated that reappraisal interventions could help to increase psychological resilience and alleviate adverse impacts on women, caused by lockdown and self-isolation [ 51 ].…”

The Psychological Nursing Interventions Based on Pygmalion Effect Could Alleviate Negative Emotions of Patients with Suspected COVID-19 Patients: a Retrospective Analysis

“…The public often have different degrees of psychological stress in the face of sudden infectious public health incidents, especially in the high-incidence period of infectious diseases, they are prone to various negative emotions. 22 , 23 In the research of D’Emeh W. et al, COVID-19 scale and self-testing anxiety scale were collected from 240 nurses. They found that they had experienced tremendous pressure and anxiety related to work under the background of COVID-19 pandemic.…”