Age Differences in Preferences for Fear-Enhancing Vs. Fear-Reducing News in a Disease Outbreak

How COVID-19 News Affect Older Adults' Mental Health-Evidence of a Positivity Bias

BACKGROUND

Media affects the trajectory of many individuals' mental health-with media news, individuals experience negative bias more than positive bias. However, there is also evidence of an age-related positivity effect, with negativity bias generally fading with age. With the rise of COVID-19 cases, older adults (aged 55 years and older) who consume media frequently are at a high risk for declining mental health. To date, there has been no research on the positivity vs. negativity bias of media news on older adults. Here, we investigated whether positivity or negativity bias plays a larger role in affecting how older adults react to COVID-19 news.

METHODS

Sixty-nine older adults (aged 55-95) answered questions about their weekly media consumption and how closely they followed news relating to COVID-19. They also completed a general health questionnaire. They were then randomly assigned to read either positive or negative COVID-19 news (n = 35 and 34, respectively). The adults were asked if the news made them feel happy or fearful, and if they wanted to read more about the news or ignore the news.

RESULTS

An analysis revealed that the more often older adults consumed media and the more closely they followed COVID-19 news, the more they felt unhappy and depressed. Importantly, older adults who read positive news reported stronger responses than those who read negative news. Older adults appeared to have a strong positivity bias for COVID-19 news, reporting feeling happy and wanting to read about positive news. In contrast, negative COVID-19 news did not evoke similar levels of response from the older adults.

CONCLUSIONS

Media consumption of COVID-19 news does negatively impact the mental well-being of older adults, but older adults appear to have a strong positivity bias and a lack of negativity bias for COVID-19 news. These findings suggest that older adults can remain hopeful and positive during periods of public health crises and intense stress, which is essential to sustaining their mental well-being during difficult times.

Social media exposure assessment: influence on attitudes toward generic vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose

Even though social media (SM) has been explored in-depth, its role remains unclear regarding short- and long-term preventive attitudes in global health emergencies. To fill this gap, the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework aims to clarify the social media exposure mission in acknowledging risk perception and triggering preventive attitudes and behaviors toward COVID-19 and general vaccination.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted an explanatory-predictive study on 480 Romanian students, using partial least squares structural equation modeling, and performed model evaluation, multi-group, model selection, and importance-performance map analyses.

Findings

The study provides insights in understanding significant relationships and drivers explaining and predicting attitudes towards vaccines. The main relationships are between fear and risk perception; risk and preventive attitudes and behaviors; and vaccination degree and attitudes to vaccines. The most important factor is the vaccination degree and media exposure is the most performant.

Practical implications

Developing and applying regulations and communication strategies for quality mass information may positively increase attitudes toward vaccines by indirectly enforcing the main drivers.

Social implications

Organizations, authorities, and opinion leaders must have a coherent supportive presence in media.

Originality/value

This study filled the literature gap by building a generic theoretical and empirical proven framework that investigates the mediated effect towards vaccines of all media types by COVID-19 experience and vaccination degree.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-11-2021-0621

COVID-19 state anxiety of older adults: effects of defensive information processes

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

To explore coping processes used by adults aged 60 and above (defined as high age-related risk group) in reaction to the COVID-19 threat, and the associations between these processes and state anxiety.

DESIGN AND METHODS

A cross-sectional study with 498 respondents of an online survey, 72 (15%) in the high age-related risk group. Questionnaires measured: background variables, state anxiety, and COVID-19 related perceptions.

RESULTS

The high age-related risk group perceived the coronavirus as more severe, their belongingness to a risk group as higher, and the behavioral recommendations as more effective compared to the low age-related risk group. The part of perceived vulnerability that is not explained by belonging to an age-related risk group (defined as residual perceived vulnerability) was lower in the high age-related risk group. Mediation analysis indicated that the high (compared to the low) age-related risk group had lower anxiety levels, and that this effect was mediated by lower residual perceived vulnerability and higher perceived disease severity levels.

CONCLUSIONS

The higher age-related risk group maintains a relatively moderate level of anxiety without denying their belonging to a high risk group. This can be explained by defensive processing of COVID-19 related information and by developmental processes.