Prosocial behavior promotes positive emotion during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about humans' physical and mental well-being. In response, there has been an urgent "call to action" for psychological interventions that enhance positive emotion and psychological resilience. Prosocial behavior has been shown to effectively promote well-being, but is this strategy effective during a pandemic when ongoing apprehension for personal safety could acutely heighten self-focused concern? In two online preregistered experiments (N = 1,623) conducted during the early stage of pandemic (April 2020), we examined this question by randomly assigning participants to engage in other- or self-beneficial action. For the first time, we manipulated whether prosocial behavior was related to the source of stress (coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19]): Participants purchased COVID-19-related (personal protective equipment, PPE) or COVID-19-unrelated items (food/writing supplies) for themselves or someone else. Consistent with preregistered hypotheses, prosocial (vs. non-pro-social or proself) behavior led to higher levels of self-reported positive affect, empathy, and social connectedness. Notably, we also found that psychological benefits were larger when generous acts were unrelated to COVID-19 (vs. related to COVID-19). When prosocial and proself spending involved identical COVID-19 PPEs items, prosocial behavior's benefits were detectable only on empathy and social connectedness, but not on posttask positive affect. These findings suggest that while there are boundary conditions to be considered, generous action offers one strategy to bolster well-being during the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Policy stringency and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis of data from 15 countries.

BACKGROUND: To date, public health policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated on the basis of their ability to reduce transmission and minimise economic harm. We aimed to assess the association between COVID-19 policy restrictions and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: In this longitudinal analysis, we combined daily policy stringency data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker with psychological distress scores and life evaluations captured in the Imperial College London-YouGov COVID-19 Behaviour Tracker Global Survey in fortnightly cross-sections from samples of 15 countries between April 27, 2020, and June 28, 2021. The mental health questions provided a sample size of 432 642 valid responses, with an average of 14 918 responses every 2 weeks. To investigate how policy stringency was associated with mental health, we considered two potential mediators: observed physical distancing and perceptions of the government's handling of the pandemic. Countries were grouped on the basis of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic as those pursuing an elimination strategy (countries that aimed to eliminate community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within their borders) or those pursuing a mitigation strategy (countries that aimed to control SARS-CoV-2 transmission). Using a combined dataset of country-level and individual-level data, we estimated linear regression models with country-fixed effects (ie, dummy variables representing the countries in our sample) and with individual and contextual covariates. Additionally, we analysed data from a sample of Nordic countries, to compare Sweden (that pursued a mitigation strategy) to other Nordic countries (that adopted a near-elimination strategy). FINDINGS: Controlling for individual and contextual variables, higher policy stringency was associated with higher mean psychological distress scores and lower life evaluations (standardised coefficients ß=0·014 [95% CI 0·005 to 0·023] for psychological distress; ß=-0·010 [-0·015 to -0·004] for life evaluation). Pandemic intensity (number of deaths per 100 000 inhabitants) was also associated with higher mean psychological distress scores and lower life evaluations (standardised coefficients ß=0·016 [0·008 to 0·025] for psychological distress; ß=-0·010 [-0·017 to -0·004] for life evaluation). The negative association between policy stringency and mental health was mediated by observed physical distancing and perceptions of the government's handling of the pandemic. We observed that countries pursuing an elimination strategy used different policy timings and intensities compared with countries pursuing a mitigation strategy. The containment policies of countries pursuing elimination strategies were on average less stringent, and fewer deaths were observed. INTERPRETATION: Changes in mental health measures during the first 15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic were small. More stringent COVID-19 policies were associated with poorer mental health. Elimination strategies minimised transmission and deaths, while restricting mental health effects. FUNDING: None.

Mental Health During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Recommendations for Moving Forward.

COVID-19 has infected millions of people and upended the lives of most humans on the planet. Researchers from across the psychological sciences have sought to document and investigate the impact of COVID-19 in myriad ways, causing an explosion of research that is broad in scope, varied in methods, and challenging to consolidate. Because policy and practice aimed at helping people live healthier and happier lives requires insight from robust patterns of evidence, this article provides a rapid and thorough summary of high-quality studies available through early 2021 examining the mental-health consequences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. Our review of the evidence indicates that anxiety, depression, and distress increased in the early months of the pandemic. Meanwhile, suicide rates, life satisfaction, and loneliness remained largely stable throughout the first year of the pandemic. In response to these insights, we present seven recommendations (one urgent, two short-term, and four ongoing) to support mental health during the pandemic and beyond.

Well-being Analysis Favours a Virus-Elimination Strategy for COVID-19

A well-being approach requires looking beyond COVID-19 deaths to compare the performance of elimination versus mitigation strategies as measured by other important supports for well-being. What do the data show? Our comparison based on 2020 data shows a virus elimination strategy to be more successful than other options, whether measured in terms of COVID-19 deaths, overall excess deaths, income, unemployment, trust, or mental and physical health. Countries that chose and followed a strategy of reducing community transmission to zero and keeping it there saved lives and better protected income and employment, all without obvious costs to either the social fabric or the mental health of their populations.

Brief exposure to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: Doom-scrolling has negative emotional consequences, but kindness-scrolling does not.

People often seek out information as a means of coping with challenging situations. Attuning to negative information can be adaptive because it alerts people to the risks in their environment, thereby preparing them for similar threats in the future. But is this behaviour adaptive during a pandemic when bad news is ubiquitous? We examine the emotional consequences of exposure to brief snippets of COVID-related news via a Twitter feed (Study 1), or a YouTube reaction video (Study 2). Compared to a no-information exposure group, consumption of just 2-4 minutes of COVID-related news led to immediate and significant reductions in positive affect (Studies 1 and 2) and optimism (Study 2). Exposure to COVID-related kind acts did not have the same negative consequences, suggesting that not all social media exposure is detrimental for well-being. We discuss strategies to counteract the negative emotional consequences of exposure to negative news on social media.

Recognizing the Impact of COVID-19 on the Poor Alters Attitudes Towards Poverty and Inequality.

The novel Coronavirus that spread around the world in early 2020 triggered a global pandemic and economic downturn that affected nearly everyone. Yet the crisis had a disproportionate impact on the poor and revealed how easily working-class individuals' financial security can be destabilised by factors beyond personal control. In a pre-registered longitudinal study of Americans (N = 233) spanning April 2019 to May 2020, we tested whether the pandemic altered beliefs about the extent to which poverty is caused by external forces and internal dispositions and support for economic inequality. Over this timespan, participants revealed a shift in their attributions for poverty, reporting that poverty is more strongly impacted by external-situational causes and less by internal-dispositional causes. However, we did not detect an overall mean-level change in opposition to inequality or support for government intervention. Instead, only for those who most strongly recognized the negative impact of COVID-19 did changes in poverty attributions translate to decreased support for inequality, and increased support for government intervention to help the poor.