Abstract

Air pollution has been shown to have detrimental effects on physical and mental health, yet little is known about how air pollution affects psychosocial functioning in everyday life. We conducted three studies that utilized experimental methods and web crawler technology to examine the effect of hazy environmental conditions on perceived interpersonal trust, and to investigate the roles of emotion and emotional susceptibility in mediating or moderating the negative impact of air pollution. In Study 1, participants were presented with landscape photos that showed either hazy scenes or clear scenes. Those who viewed photos of hazy scenes reduced their levels of interpersonal trust. In Study 2, emotion data were collected from social media with web crawler technology, in connection with meteorological monitoring data during the same period. Hazy conditions were associated with reduced expressions of positive emotion on social media, whereas clearer conditions were associated with enhanced positive emotional expressions. In Study 3, we simulated Weibo communications in the laboratory. The findings showed that emotional susceptibility moderated the negative effect of hazy conditions on interpersonal trust, and negative emotion mediated the effect of hazy conditions on interpersonal trust. The findings advance the understanding of the impact of air pollution on interpersonal trust and social relations and the associated psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions. They have important real-life implications.

Highlights

  • Air pollution strongly affects the quality of human life

  • Using the social media context and an experimental method, we examined in Study 3 whether the relation between haze and interpersonal trust was mediated by emotion and moderated by emotional susceptibility

  • Preliminary analyses showed that women scored higher than men on emotional susceptibility, t(89) = 2.12, p = 0.036, d = 0.50, and age was significantly correlated with positive affect (PA), r = 0.23, p = 0.03

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Summary

Introduction

Air pollution strongly affects the quality of human life. It deprives people of the pleasure of viewing blue skies and natural scenery, eradicates the joy of travelling to scenic attractions, increases anxiety about health, and in worst cases, causes illness and death. Air pollution and the diseases it causes resulted in the death of more than five million people in 2017, according to the U.S data reported in 2019 Air pollution is the leading cause of death in India. Britain regards air pollution as one of the greatest challenges to public health. China considers the reduction of haze caused by air pollution to be its top priority

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