Abstract
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a large portion of the world into quarantine, leading to an extensive period of stress making it necessary to explore regulatory techniques that are effective at stimulating long-lasting positive emotion. Previous research has demonstrated that anticipating positive events produces increases in positive emotion during discrete stressors. We hypothesized that state and trait positive anticipation during the COVID-19 pandemic would be associated with increased positive emotions. We assessed how often participants thought about a future positive/negative/neutral event, activity, or goal through a daily reconstruction method that represented a “day in the life” of people in the United States during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of multi-level modeling and mediational analyses demonstrated that higher optimism, one form of trait positive anticipation, was related to higher state positive anticipation, which was in turn related to higher positive emotions during the current episode, which persisted to the next episode. In addition, both optimism and state positive anticipation were related to adaptive responses to the pandemic. These findings suggest that anticipation of future emotional experiences and hopefulness for the future can be a powerful predictor of positive emotions during global pandemics and perhaps other similar chronic stressors.
Highlights
By the beginning of the year 2020, a large portion of the world was forced into quarantine by the spread of the novel COVID-19 virus, which was caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2) (Andersen et al, 2020)
This paper explores the benefits of anticipating future positive events and maintaining optimism for individuals coping with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States during the early stages of the pandemic
Trait optimism was related to an overall positive profile – lower state negative anticipation, lower negative emotions and stress, higher control and motivation to deal with COVID and less thinking about COVID (Table 1)
Summary
By the beginning of the year 2020, a large portion of the world was forced into quarantine by the spread of the novel COVID-19 virus, which was caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2) (Andersen et al, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic was a chronic stressor, one that caused major disruption with no foreseeable end (Elliott and Eisdorfer, 1982). It was unique because it affected almost everyone in the world with a combination of increased minor stressors in daily life and major stressors such as sickness, financial hardship, quarantining, uncertainty, and even death (CDC, 2020). This paper explores the benefits of anticipating future positive events and maintaining optimism for individuals coping with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States during the early stages of the pandemic. State and trait positive anticipation are the focus of this paper because they are hypothesized to be effective strategies during this type of chronic stressor. There is ample research on the role of trait positive anticipation/optimism in coping with chronic stress, there is a relative lack of research on the role of state positive anticipation for coping with chronic stress
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