How do Good and Bad News Impact Mood During the Covid-19 Pandemic? The Role of Similarity

Abstract

How do media reports about the Covid-19 pandemic influence our mood? Building on the social comparison theory, we predicted that reading negative news affecting a similar group would result in an impaired mood. In contrast, reading negative news about a dissimilar group should lead to an improved mood. To test this, 150 undergraduate students read positive or negative news about the well-being of a similar or dissimilar group during the pandemic. As predicted, a mood assimilation effect occurred for similar groups, whilst a contrast effect occurred for a dissimilar group. The findings suggest that media reports can have a strong impact on mood. The direction of these effects, however, seems to depend strongly on social comparison processes.

Impact of COVID-19 Confinement on Mental Health in Youth and Vulnerable Populations: An Extensive Narrative Review

“…The prevalence of mental health problems resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has progressively increased the search for information and indicators related to mental health [170,171]. This is confirmed by several studies that have investigated searches related to psychological processes that have appeared during the pandemic [172,173]. Terms such as anxiety, stress, depression, and insomnia, among others, were the main focus of these investigations [174][175][176].…”