COVID-19 news valence effects on emotion and its modulation by a relaxation: A randomized online experiment during COVID-19 pandemic

Baseline emotional state influences on the response to animated short films: A randomized online experiment

Introduction

Considering the relevance of the emotional state, it is necessary to understand how daily stimuli can modulate the emotions. Animated short films are common stimuli, but it is unknown how they can modulate the emotional state. The study aimed to evaluate: how participants' emotional state changed after watching animated short films with positive or negative emotional valence in an online experiment; the relationship between participants' baseline score on an Emotional Intensity Scale and their potential change in the main emotion after watching the films; and the association between the initial main emotion valence and the potential change in this emotion with participants' sociodemographic information.

Methods

A sample of 2,269 participants recruited during COVID-19 pandemic were randomly assigned to either watch a negative or positive animated short film.

Results

The results showed that, after watching a film with negative valence, participants were in a more negative emotional state than at baseline and compared with those who watched the film with positive valence. Also, individuals who had a negative baseline emotion and maintained the same emotion after the film had presented higher baseline emotional state scores (more negative emotion) than those who changed their emotions. In addition, the individuals who kept the baseline emotion had an association with age, marital status, level of education and psychiatric disorders, use of medication, and emotional awareness, while the individuals who changed the baseline emotion had an association with age, gender, and following or not social distancing recommendations.

Conclusion

Baseline emotional state may influence the response to animated short films and sociodemographic characteristics are associated with the initial main emotion valence and its potential change in this emotion.

Investigating the Impacts of Information Overload on Psychological Well-being of Healthcare Professionals: Role of COVID-19 Stressor

While past research has focused on the benefits of social media during pandemics, this study emphasizes the possible negative effects of social media use among healthcare professionals. It has been stated that healthcare professionals are exposed to COVID-19 and its impacts on the mental health of these workers. Even though recognizing the importance of healthcare professionals during the pandemic, the impacts of COVID-19 on the mental health of healthcare professionals have been rarely considered for investigation by researchers. By applying differential susceptibility to the media effects model (DSMM), the current article investigated the effect of COVID-19 information overload (CIO) on psychological and mental well-being and underline mechanisms. Time-wave technique was applied to collect the data. This study tested moderated mediation model by collecting data from 314 healthcare professionals. The findings stated that COVID-19 information overload impacted COVID-19 fatalism and COVID-19 exhaustion directly. Likewise, COVID-19 fatalism mediated the association between CIO and COVID-19 exhaustion. Moreover, the COVID-19 stressor moderated this mediating relationship. This study proposes several practical recommendations for healthcare professionals, social media platform providers, health authorities, organizations, and institutions on how to use social media effectively and sustainably during the global COVID-19 epidemic.