Is Fear of COVID-19 Contagious? The Effects of Emotion Contagion and Social Media Use on Anxiety in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Abstract

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic, causing substantial anxiety. One potential factor in the spread of anxiety in response to a pandemic threat is emotion contagion, the finding that emotional experiences can be socially spread through conscious and unconscious pathways. Some individuals are more susceptible to social contagion effects and may be more likely to experience anxiety and other mental health symptoms in response to a pandemic threat. Therefore, we studied the relationship between emotion contagion and mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. We administered the Emotion Contagion Scale (ESC) along with a measure of anxiety in response to COVID-19 (modified from a previous scale designed to quantify fear of the Swine Flu outbreak) and secondary outcome measures of depression, anxiety, stress, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. These measures were completed by a large (n = 603) student sample in the United States. Data were collected in the months of April and May of 2020 when the fear of COVID-19 was widespread. Results revealed that greater susceptibility to emotion contagion was associated with greater concern about the spread of COVID-19, more depression, anxiety, stress, and OCD symptoms. Consumption of media about COVID-19 also predicted anxiety about COVID-19, though results were not moderated by emotion contagion. However, emotion contagion did moderate the relationship between COVID-19-related media consumption and elevated OCD symptoms. Although limited by a cross-sectional design that precludes causal inferences, the present results highlight the need for study of how illness fears may be transmitted socially during a pandemic.

Social Media and Emotional Burnout Regulation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Multilevel Approach

“…The results in this study reveal that individuals who frequently disclose pandemic-related feelings and retweet COVID-19-related negative emotions on social media reported less reappraisal of the stressful situation. The possible maladaptive effects of social media use during the pandemic is consistent with several recent studies in the context of the current COVID-19 outbreak [8,10,64]. Based on the existing literature, this study analyzes social media in a more refined manner.…”

Social Isolation During COVID-19 Pandemic. Perceived Stress and Containment Measures Compliance Among Polish and Italian Residents

“…On the other hand, Italian residents were those who actually expressed more concern about their health or employment with no significant differences regarding other possible sources of distress between the two groups. Furthermore, as mentioned before, Italy faced a much more extreme situation with several new cases of disease and deaths reported every day in dramatic media coverage, which could also play a role in aggravating perceived stress (Wheaton et al, 2021). One possible explanation for observed distinctions may be that during the study, residents of both countries were in various phases of adaptation according to PMT (Stueck, 2021) when actual fear of death in people in Italy (rather than hypothetical at that time in Poland) switched the survival instinct into a mental defense strategy (Becker, 2021).…”

The global prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress, and, insomnia and its changes among health professionals during COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid systematic review and meta-analysis

“…As compared to the SARS epidemic, nowadays the quick spread of information (misinformation) may cause greater public fear, depression, and trouble. HPs' care for patients with a contagious disease (COVID-19 patients) resulted in fear, panic, and distress among them [112,113]. Furthermore, they feared getting infected and additionally transmitting the disease to their family members and relatives [111].…”