Objective. The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy caused a major health emergency and high uncertainty. We studied how media outlets, risk perception, state anxiety, and emotion regulation impacted peoples' reactions and undertaking of protective behaviours aimed at reducing the spread of the virus. Design. Data were collected in two cross-sectional waves (N = 992 at T1; N = 1031 at T2): at the beginning of the outbreak and once the national lockdown was imposed. Methods. Participants completed online surveys on their perception of the COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, they were asked to self-report on their emotion regulation, state anxiety, and protective behaviours. Results. Media exposure and wave predicted risk perception. An interaction between wave, risk perception, and emotion regulation predicted the number of protective behaviours people undertook. Specifically, in the second wave, the number of protective behaviours was predicted by risk perception only among those who were ineffective at regulating emotions. Instead, effective regulators undertook the same number of behaviours regardless of their level of risk perception. In the second wave, we also found that the risk perception by emotion interaction predicting protective behaviours was mediated by state anxiety. Conclusions. The present study provides important insights on how people experienced the early stages of the outbreak. This information could prove valuable in the coming months to understand who might have been more impacted by the stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent restrictive measures.

The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with mental health outcomes in the general population. This study assessed how state anxiety changed at different time points during the pandemic and how it was influenced by risk perception and trait emotional intelligence (trait EI). The study was conducted online in two data collections, at the beginning (wave 1, N = 1031) and at the end (wave 2, N = 700) of the lockdown. Participants were asked to self-report their state anxiety, risk perception of COVID-19 contagiousness, and trait EI. The interaction between risk perception and wave showed that, in wave 1 (but not in wave 2), anxiety increased as risk perception increased. Further, trait EI by wave interactions showed that effective (vs. ineffective) regulators experienced lower anxiety and this difference was larger in wave 2 than in wave 1. Because of the cross-sectional design of the study and the convenience sample we should be cautious when generalizing the present findings to the entire population. Our findings support the moderating role of trait EI on state anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. This knowledge provides further support for the importance of EI in coping with uncertain and stressful environmental conditions such as those posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This pre-registered work tests the replicability of seven studies covering the most important effects associated with mental accounting across 5,589 participants from 21 countries. Findings support the robustness of the original studies across time and culture, confirming the role of mental accounting as a critical driver of human decision-making.