Public Opinion Report: The impact of experiencing emotions during COVID-news consumption on attitudes towards governmental measures against the virus
Citizens & Public Opinion
The impact of
experiencing emotions during
COVID-news consumption on attitudes towards governmental measures against the virus
A public opinion report
ABSTRACT
In this report we examine the role of emotions experienced during COVID-news consumption and its influence on shaping attitudes towards COVID-measures. Former research demonstrated that negative emotions decreased the compliance with COVID-measures. This corresponds with the broaden-and-build theory, which implies negative emotions elicit a more narrow- and close-minded worldview. Because of this, we expected that negative emotions lead to an attitude of finding the implemented COVID-measured too much. For our research, we used a cross-sectional questionnaire, in which respondents were asked to rank eight different emotions, and enquired about their attitude towards various COVID-measures. We found that two emotions significantly correlated with different attitudes toward COVID-measures. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that people who ranked ‘desire’ as their most felt emotion were more critical of COVID policy and wanted fewer COVID-measures. More in line with our hypothesis, we found that people who ranked ‘disgust’ as their primary felt emotion were also more critical towards COVID-rules and also wanted fewer COVID-measures.
Keywords: emotions, attitudes, COVID-measures, public support, news
How we did this
As part of a larger workgroup and a cross-sectional survey, our research team conducted a study to investigate whether emotions felt during the COVID-news consumption affect people’s attitudes towards COVID-measures implemented by their government, in order to prevent the spread of the virus. The questionnaire was in field from the 22nd of October until the 8th of November 2021. All in all, 234 people participated; of whom 216 were included in the final analysis. Respondents were excluded for several reasons, for instance, being too fast or too slow or, not answering questions deemed vital for the analysis and interpretation.
The impact of experiencing emotions during COVID-news consumption on attitudes towards governmental measures against the virus
At the beginning of 2019’s winter, the COVID-19 virus disrupted people’s lives by rapidly spreading, and becoming into a worldwide pandemic. Governments struggled with policies and implementing measures in their countries (Nilsen et al., 2020). Several attempts have been made to slow the virus down, whilst keeping the economy going and citizens ‘happy’. Of course, not an easy task. Riots and protests against COVID-measures have erupted in cities all over the world (BBC News, 2021), and the pandemic has become a highly emotional topic, affecting everyone. So, will governments be able to find support for their policies in spite of the emotions of the public?
Recent studies demonstrated that the COVID situation elicited negative emotions, which in turn decreased the chance of compliance with COVID-related government measures (Dai et al., 2021). So, the experience of emotions during the pandemic affects the attitudes towards the measures implemented by the government. This makes sense when looked at from a psychological perspective. According to the broaden-and-build theory of Frederickson (2004), both negative and positive emotions have an evolutionary function. Negative emotions narrow our worldview, so we can focus on direct problems. In the case of COVID-measures, this could be the restriction of individual freedom. Positive emotions broaden our worldview, so we can learn from positive experiences, and these are correlated with open-mindedness. This could lead to a better understanding why COVID-measures are needed in times like these. From a scientific viewpoint, the current topic is an interesting phenomenon to study. The COVID-19 is the first pandemic since the Spanish flu in 1918 (Staff, 2021), and due to the recency, there is still a research gap. From a societal perspective it is important to study this topic to get a better understanding of citizens’ behavioural and emotional responses. An appropriate reaction of the government towards anxious people to get vaccinated would likely be different than towards angry people, for instance.
Negative emotions are experienced the most during COVID-news consumption
The unexpected nature of the pandemic triggered all sorts of emotional reactions, both positive and negative. When participants were asked to recall how they felt the last time they consumed news related to COVID-19 and rank their emotions from 1 (the least one felt), through 8 (the most felt), on average, the majority ranked sadness (6.59) as the strongest emotion, followed by the other negative emotions, namely anger (5,99), anxiety (5,33), disgust (5.08), fear (4.96). Thus, negative emotions accounted for 77.6% of all reactions. Among the remaining generally lower ranked positive emotions, desire was the most popular one with an average rank of 3.11, followed by relaxation (2.68) and happiness with the lowest overall position (2,26, cf. Graph 1).
Graph 1: Average rank for the individual emotions
Gender makes a difference on the importance of emotions
For three of the examined emotions, significant differences between males and females were found. Whilst females felt significantly more often anxious and fearful than males, male respondents felt significantly more often relaxed (cf. Graph 2).
Graph 2: Average rank of emotions with a significant difference per gender
Emotions are not equally balanced amongst countries
We assessed whether the respondents’ country of origin played a role in the extent they experienced emotions. The results showed that European nationals experienced a significantly higher degree of sadness than people from the rest of the world. The results for desire were also significant, implying that European nationals felt more desire than people in North-America and elsewhere.
Attitudes towards COVID-measures differ between Europe and North America
In general, respondents lived all across the globe. However, only for North America (18,5%) and Europe (74,5%) the sample sizes were big enough to be able to make valid assumptions about their population (cf. Graph 3).
Graph 3: Percentages for where respondents live
Furthermore, many countries differed in the typology and severity of COVID-measures their governments implemented, which in turn likely had an impact on citizen’s attitudes toward those different measures. This is why differences in countries respondents lived in were considered to be important for the analysis as a potential moderator. Indeed, the attitudes towards the measures between respondents from Europe and North America differed significantly. In Europe, citizens tended to feel more like the COVID-measures were too much (lower ranked), whereas in North America, citizens more often leaned towards believing the measures were not enough (higher ranking, cf. Graph 4).
Graph 4: Average mean for attitudes towards relevant government;
1= too much, 7= not enough
Experiencing desire and disgust contribute to predicting attitudes towards COVID-measures
Our regression analysis included age, gender, self-reported political orientation and country of origin as factors which are intimately related to the way citizens formed their opinions about the measures: a generational gap, applicability of measures per country, political orientation and the way males and females experience and report emotions differ considerably (Zimmermann & Iwanski, 2014; Tskhay & Rule, 2015; Matthews et. al, 2021). Taking this together, we found that feeling disgust is significantly correlated to a less favourable attitude towards more measures. In other words, the more disgust a participant felt, the more their attitude leaned toward saying measures were too much. Jointly with some of the aforementioned variables, disgust explained 21% of the variance on attitudes towards Covid-measures. Surprisingly, this was the only negative emotion that led to a negative attitude as well. However, desire was significantly related to a less favourable attitude towards measures. So, the more desire one experienced, the more in favour of a reduction of measures one was. This explained 16% of the variance on attitude towards COVID-measures. One almost significant effect was also found. The results showed that the more fearful citizens are, the more they express being in favour of an increase in measures. Although the former effect was not significant, it might be insightful, given that the probability (p=.056), which indicates that for a larger sample, it would likely be significant. Furthermore, only the variables of self-reported political orientation, country of origin, disgust and desire resulted in significant indicators for predicting attitudes. No significant differences or interaction effects were found between gender, age groups, or educational level for the eight emotions and attitudes. Hence, these variables do not play any role on how emotions affect the public's attitude towards government’s COVID-measures.
Graph 5: The effect of feeling disgust during COVID-news consumption (1.00 – 8.00), on attitude towards COVID-measures (1.00 = ‘too much’ measures, wanting less, 4.00 = ‘about right’ amount of measure, 7.00 = ‘too little’ measures, wanting more)
Graph 6: The effect of feeling desire during COVID-news consumption (1.00 – 8.00), on attitude towards COVID-measures (1.00 = ‘too much’ measures, wanting less, 4.00 = ‘about right’ amount of measures, 7.00 = ‘too little’ measures, wanting more)
Conclusion
Negative emotions have been found to be the most experienced emotions during COVID-news consumption. These emotions have an effect on public attitudes towards government’s COVID-measures. This report has revealed that, despite past research showing that negative emotions should be minimised by the government during a pandemic – in order to increase the public compliance with restrictive measures (Dai et al., 2021) – disgust is a negative emotion that actually increases the wanting of further measures. We have found that the emotions of desire and disgust – experienced during COVID-news consumption – have a significant effect on attitudes towards governmental measures against the virus. Against our expectations, we have found that people who felt desire more strongly, believed the COVID-measures were too much. Yet, going along with our expectations, those who experienced disgust to a greater extent, have similarly been critical about the measures, finding them too much.
Limitations & future research
Although our research has come up with some interesting conclusions, it also has some flaws. First of all, it is important to mention that our sample was not random, but rather a convenience sample, containing two times more women than men, mostly highly educated (85,6%) and from Europe; so, based on this non-representative sample no assumptions about the general population can be made. Since these factors by themselves could influence attitudes towards COVID-measures. Next, problems can arise during the interpretation of the results. In our research we assume that COVID-news elicits emotions, which in turn change an attitude. However, one could also argue that somebody holds attitudes and COVID-news triggers an emotion based on that attitude. The direction of the effect is not completely clear after this research, so future research could focus on this. Third, the research was unable to take into account each represented country’s implemented measures, which affect attitudes towards such measures – whether one is present in a country, or not. A final limitation of our research is that participants had to self-report their experienced emotions during the last time they consumed COVID-news. This can be problematic due to people’s limited capacity to recall (Lang, 2000). Our research tried to counter this by asking respondents to rank their emotions (from most felt to least felt), however this still doesn’t completely solve the problematic aspect of self-reports.
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References
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Staff, S. X. (2021, November 1). COVID-19 compared with other deadly viruses. Medical Xpress. Retrieved from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-covid-deadly-viruses.html
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Zimmermann, & Iwanski, A. (2014). Emotion regulation from early adolescence to emerging adulthood and middle adulthood: Age differences, gender differences, and emotion-specific developmental variations. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 38(2), 182–194. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025413515405
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