The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world.
We show that exposure to market relationships increases people's tendency to make utilitarian moral choices by means of proportional thinking-the definitional feature of the market mindset. In Experiment 1, participants primed with market relationships made more utilitarian choices in both the trolley and the footbridge dilemmas. In Experiment 2, priming market mindset led to more utilitarian moral choices and to greater focus on the proportion of survivors to victims. Experiment 3 showed that the effect of market mindset on utilitarian choices held only when the numbers of potential deaths and saved lives were clearly specified. A preregistered Experiment 4 demonstrated that the motivation to use proportional thinking mediates the relationship between market mindset and making utilitarian choices. Experiment 5, also preregistered, showed that the main effect we demonstrated is not due to suppressed emotions and that proportional thinking increases utilitarian choices as part of a broader orientation on rationality. K E Y W O R D S market mindset, moral choices, proportional thinking, utilitarian choices | 1501 MARKET MINDSET IMPACTS MORAL DECISIONS directed towards calculating and acting in accord with ratios or rates (Fiske, 2004; Rai & Fiske, 2011). 1.1 | Moral judgment and choice: Utilitarianism versus deontology When investigating moral judgment and decision-making, both philosophy and psychology often refer to the dual-process approach (Greene, 2007, 2014). This framework differentiates between deontology, which states that morality of an action depends on the intrinsic nature of human actions regardless of their consequences (Kant, 1785/1959) and utilitarianism or consequentialism, which implies that morality of different actions is determined by their outcomes (Mill, 1861/1998). Proponents of the utilitarian position argue that moral decision-making should always lead to the best overall consequences for all concerned (Conway, Goldstein-Greenwood, Polacek, & Greene, 2018). Even though the tension between these two approaches has, for many years, been at the heart of the philosophical debate, it is also of great importance from the standpoint of social psychology (Bartels, 2008; Greene, 2007). It concerns not only rather abstract and rare dilemmas such as whether to kill one person in order to save several others (Thomson, 1976), but also more practical, daily-life problems such as whether to fire a small group of workers during a recession to lower costs and save jobs for a larger group of employees. Several years ago, Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, and Cohen (2001) proposed a theoretical model that aimed to explain why, in some situations, people employ deontological reasoning, while in others they turn towards the utilitarian orientation (see
The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing negative emotions and decreasing positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes may have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we will examine the impact of reappraisal, a widely studied and highly effective form of emotion regulation. Participants from 55 countries (expected N = 25,448) will be randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing), an active control condition, or a passive control condition. We predict that both reappraisal interventions will reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions relative to the control conditions. We further predict that reconstrual will decrease negative emotions more than repurposing, and that repurposing will increase positive emotions more than reconstrual. We hope to inform efforts to create a scalable intervention for use around the world to build resilience during the pandemic and beyond.
The research Ethics committee of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology (ELTE) granted a central permission (permission nr: 2019/47). Many other labs obtained IRB approval too, which approvals can be found here: https://osf.io/j6kte/ . Participants had to give informed consent before starting the experiment. Only participants recruited through Mturk or Prolific received monetary compensation.Note that full information on the approval of the study protocol must also be provided in the manuscript.
Significance Communicating in ways that motivate engagement in social distancing remains a critical global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tested motivational qualities of messages about social distancing (those that promoted choice and agency vs. those that were forceful and shaming) in 25,718 people in 89 countries. The autonomy-supportive message decreased feelings of defying social distancing recommendations relative to the controlling message, and the controlling message increased controlled motivation, a less effective form of motivation, relative to no message. Message type did not impact intentions to socially distance, but people’s existing motivations were related to intentions. Findings were generalizable across a geographically diverse sample and may inform public health communication strategies in this and future global health emergencies.
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