Barca Laura, Iodice Pierpaolo, Chaigneau Amine, Lancia GianLuca, Pezzulo Giovanni
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Rome, Italy.
Movement Interactions Performance - MIP, UR 4334, Le Mans Université, Le Mans, France.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 17;20(1):e0311009. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311009. eCollection 2025.
This study examines whether the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the affectivity of the population extend one year after the outbreak. In an online-mobile session, participants completed surveys (i.e., demographic characteristics, positive-negative affectivity, interoceptive awareness) and a similarity judgment task of triplets of emotional concepts, from which we derived 2D maps of their affective knowledge representation. Compared with pre-pandemic data derived from a comparable population, we report three main findings. First, we observed enhanced negative affectivity during the pandemic, but no changes in positive affectivity levels. Second, increased self-reported interoceptive awareness compared to pre-pandemic data, with greater attention to bodily sensations and adaptive aspects of interoceptive sensitivity. Furthermore, female participants reported higher scores than males on the questionnaire subscales of Emotional Awareness and Attention Regulation. Third, the effect of pandemic-related conditions is also apparent in the mental organization of emotional concepts, especially for female participants (i.e., reduced coherence in the organization of the concepts along the arousal dimension and more misclassification of concepts based on arousal) and participants who did not perform physical activity (a collapse of the arousal dimension). Some of the effects of the pandemic, thus, persist about a year after the outbreak. These results advise providing programs of psychological and emotional assistance throughout the pandemic beyond the outbreak, and that age-dependent gender differences should be accounted for to define tailored interventions. Physical activity might relieve pandemic-related stressors, so it should be promoted during particularly stressful periods for the population.
本研究考察了新冠疫情对民众情感的不利影响在疫情爆发一年后是否仍持续存在。在一次线上移动会议中，参与者完成了多项调查（即人口统计学特征、正负情感、内感受觉知）以及一项情感概念三元组的相似性判断任务，我们据此得出了他们情感知识表征的二维图谱。与来自可比人群的疫情前数据相比，我们报告了三项主要发现。首先，我们观察到疫情期间负面情感增强，但正面情感水平没有变化。其次，与疫情前数据相比，自我报告的内感受觉知有所增加，对身体感觉和内感受敏感性的适应性方面给予了更多关注。此外，在情感意识和注意力调节问卷子量表上，女性参与者的得分高于男性。第三，疫情相关状况的影响在情感概念的心理组织中也很明显，尤其是对女性参与者（即沿着唤醒维度的概念组织连贯性降低，基于唤醒的概念错误分类增多）以及未进行体育活动的参与者（唤醒维度瓦解）而言。因此，疫情的一些影响在爆发后约一年仍持续存在。这些结果建议在疫情爆发后的整个期间提供心理和情感援助项目，并且在制定针对性干预措施时应考虑年龄相关的性别差异。体育活动可能会缓解与疫情相关的压力源，因此在民众压力特别大的时期应加以推广。
