From the COVID‐19 lockdown to the new normal: Two‐year changes in daily stress and positive event processes

Abstract

The emergence of the novel COVID‐19 disease and the social distancing measures implemented to curb its spread affected most aspects of daily life. Past work suggests that during times of more severe stress, people respond to daily stressors with relatively higher negative affect. However, little is known about how people responded to daily stressors and positive events at different moments in time during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Thus, we examined longitudinal changes in daily event‐related affect (covariation of daily stressors or positive events with same‐day affect) from Spring 2020 (wave 1) to 2022 (wave 2). The sample consisted of 324 adults aged 18–80 (mean = 52 years; 89% women) from the US and Canada who completed weeklong daily diaries at both waves. The results revealed improvements in affective well‐being, stressor‐related affect (i.e., smaller fluctuations in affect on stressor days vs. nonstressor days), and positive event‐related affect (i.e., lower negative affect on days with vs. without positive events). Furthermore, as people gradually resumed their social activities from 2020 to 2022, people reported being exposed to an increased frequency of both stressors and positive events. This study highlights the potential influence of socio‐historical phenomena, such as an ongoing pandemic, on the events that people encounter and how they emotionally respond to them.