From anxiety to action-Experience of threat, emotional states, reactance, and action preferences in the early days of COVID-19 self-isolation in Germany and Austria.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted everyday life virtually everywhere in the world, enabling real-life research on threat-and-defense processes. In a survey conducted within the first days of implementing social distancing measures in Austria and Germany, we aimed to explore the pathways from threat perception to preferences of defense strategies. We found that anxiety, approach-related affect, and reactance were specifically elicited by motivational (vs. epistemic) discrepancies. In a second step, we tested the mediating effect of anxiety, approach-related affect, and reactance on preferences regarding personal-social and concrete-abstract defenses. Experiencing anxiety was related to interest in security-related actions, and approach-affect was related to both personal projects and so

SUBMITTER: Reiss S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7723254 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature