Happiness during a mass trauma: Predicting happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic through function, stress, anxiety, and coping.

Abstract

This study identifies the psychological mechanism that predicts happiness in mass trauma times by testing a model that includes coping styles, anxiety, stress, and function. The survey comprised 509 respondents who answered questions about their demographic characteristics and ranked their happiness, stress, anxiety, function, and coping strategies. Structural equation modeling was used to test the model's goodness-of-fit analysis. The theoretical model was a good fit for predicting happiness during COVID-19 but not for predicting general happiness. Problem-focused coping did not contribute to function. The final model includes emotion-focused coping, anxiety, stress, and function and predicts 37% of happiness during COVID-19. The statistically significant correlations include a strong, positive correlation between anxiety and stress (r = .71, p < .001); a weak, positive correlation between emotional coping and function (r = .24, p < .001); and moderate, negative correlations between anxiety and function (r = -.41, p < .001) and between function and stress (r = .24, p < .001). Function was positively associated with happiness (r = .39, p < .001), while stress was negatively associated with happiness (r = -.32, p < .001). This model indicates that anxiety, stress, function, and emotion-focused coping contribute to predicting happiness during mass trauma events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).