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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.

A recent study (Mazar & Zhong, 2010) argued that green consumption may serve as a moral license and thus lead to subsequent dishonest behavior. In our three replications of the study (total N = 1,274), two of which were preregistered, participants' level of green consumption was manipulated by having them purchase goods in either a green or conventional store. Three different tasks which allowed participants to cheat for monetary profit were used to measure dishonesty across the experiments. We found no effect of green consumption on subsequent honesty. These results cast doubt on the size of the effect found in the original study and suggest that green consumption is unlikely to trigger a cross-domain moral licensing effect.

The literature shows that threats unrelated to environmental problems can shift attention away from these problems and affect pro-environmental behavior. It is not clear whether the COVID-19 crisis that started in 2019 had any uniform effect on pro-environmental behavior and decision making. In two preregistered panel studies conducted before and during the first COVID wave ( n 1 = 206, n 2 = 164) and before and during the second COVID wave ( n 3 = n 4 = 260), we found that the crisis had had no uniform effect on pro-environmental behaviors, environmental attitude, nor on the behavioral costs of general pro-environmental behavior. Analysis of one specific pro-environmental behavior, the choice of environmentally friendly delivery of products, revealed that the general preference for green delivery services and heightened preference for green delivery services among people with higher attitude levels remained unchanged by the COVID-19 crisis. Thus, if the COVID-19 crisis has had any effects on pro-environmental behaviors, these effects are probably fragmented, specific to certain population segments, and not visible in the short-term perspective.

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