When Will the Lockdown End? Confinement Duration Forecasts and Self-Reported Life Satisfaction in Spain: A Longitudinal Study.

Gerardo Sabater-Grande,Noemí Herranz-Zarzoso,Nikolaos Georgantzís,Aurora García-Gallego

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635145

Gerardo Sabater-Grande, Noemí Herranz-Zarzoso + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635145

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Abstract

This paper reports results from a longitudinal study on the impact of the lockdown on daily self-reported life satisfaction levels during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. A stable panel (N = 1,131) of adult subjects were surveyed during 84 consecutive days (March 29–June 20, 2020). They were asked to report daily life satisfaction and health state levels. Interestingly, daily life satisfaction increased during the lockdown. At the beginning of the experiment, subjects were asked to guess the end-week of the lockdown, against a possible monetary reward for accurate forecasts. Subjects predicting a longer lockdown period reported a higher average level of daily life satisfaction. Females reported on average lower levels of daily life satisfaction, but exhibited a stronger tendency to report higher levels of life satisfaction, the longer their lockdown forecast. Individual heterogeneity in life satisfaction levels can be partly attributed to personality traits, with neuroticism having a negative effect, while extraversion and agreeableness having a positive effect on daily life satisfaction.

Highlights

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19, hereafter) had developed into a global health emergency
Extending the aforementioned research on the psychological impact of COVID-19 in Spain, the present study examined the temporal evolution of life satisfaction during the lockdown from the first phase of the pandemic to the slow return to a new “normality.” With the exceptions of Stuchlikova et al (2020) and Planchuelo-Gómez et al (2020), where data concerned four and two time-frames, respectively, to our knowledge, this is the only study generating empirical evidence on daily life satisfaction over the whole period of the lockdown
We present regression analysis, focusing first on the effect of lockdown-end expectation on reported daily life satisfaction

Summary

INTRODUCTION

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19, hereafter) had developed into a global health emergency. In Spain, Odriozola-González et al (2020a) conducted a cross-sectional study where anxiety, depression and stress were observed in 32, 44, and 37% of respondents, respectively The prevalence of these symptoms was associated with female gender, younger age and self-reported COVID-19 symptoms. Blasco-Belled et al (2020) investigated reactions to the COVID-19 outbreak and the impact on subjective well-being in a sample of 541 Spanish adults They found that life satisfaction was predicted positively by hope about overcoming the pandemic and negatively by social phobia given that human-to-human contact can be perceived as a source of potential danger to be avoided. Since “many studies have highlighted significant differences in individuals’ reactions to threat, according to specific personality traits” (Mazza et al, 2020) we have analyzed how subjects’ personality can explain perceived life satisfaction and its evolution during lockdown

Participants and Procedure

DATA ANALYSES AND RESULTS

DISCUSSION

ETHICS STATEMENT