The role of uncertainty, worry, and control in well-being: Evidence from the COVID-19 outbreak and pandemic in U.S. and China.

ABSTRACT

Uncertainty about the future often leads to worries about what the future will bring, which can have negative consequences for health and well-being. However, if worry can act as a motivator to promote efforts to prevent undesirable future outcomes, those negative consequences of worry may be mitigated. In this article, we apply a novel model of uncertainty, worry, and perceived control to predict psychological and physical well-being among four samples collected in China (Study 1; during the early COVID-19 outbreak in China) and the United States (Studies 2-4, during 4 weeks in May 2020, 4 weeks in November 2020, and cross-sectionally between April and November 2020). Grounded in the feeling-is-for-doing approach to emotions, we hypothesized (and found) that uncertainty about one's COVID-19 risk would predict greater worry about the virus and one's risk of contracting it, and that greater worry would in turn predict poorer well-being. We also hypothesized, and found somewhat mixed evidence, that perceptions of control over 1's COVID-19 risk moderated the relationship between worry and well-being such that worry was related to diminished well-being when people felt they lacked control over their risk for contracting the virus. This study is one of the first to demonstrate an indirect path from uncertainty to well-being via worry and to demonstrate the role of control in moderating whether uncertainty and worry manifest in poor well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).