The Effect of Emotion on Prosocial Tendency: The Moderating Effect of Epidemic Severity Under the Outbreak of COVID-19

During the outbreak of COVID-19, information on the epidemic inundated people’s lives and led to negative emotions (e.g., tension, anxiety, and fear) in many people. This study aims to explore the effect of various emotions on prosocial tendencies during the COVID-19 outbreak and the moderating effe...

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Published inFrontiers in psychology Vol. 11; p. 588701
Main Authors Ye, Yingying, Long, Tingting, Liu, Cuizhen, Xu, Dan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 21.12.2020
Subjects
big data
COVID-19
negative emotion
positive emotion
prosocial tendency
Psychology
COVID-19
negative emotion
positive emotion
prosocial tendency
big data
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Summary:During the outbreak of COVID-19, information on the epidemic inundated people’s lives and led to negative emotions (e.g., tension, anxiety, and fear) in many people. This study aims to explore the effect of various emotions on prosocial tendencies during the COVID-19 outbreak and the moderating effect of the severity of the epidemic. We explore these effects by conducting a text analysis of the content of posts by 387,730 Weibo users. The results show that the severity of the epidemic promotes prosocial tendencies; anger motivates prosocial tendencies significantly; and the severity of the epidemic moderates the effects of three emotions—anger, sadness, and surprise—on prosocial tendencies. These findings provide a reference for exploring the positive significance of major disasters.
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Reviewed by: Joanne Nicola Sneddon, The University of Western Australia, Australia; Bojana Bodroža, University of Novi Sad, Serbia
Edited by: Joanna Sokolowska, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland
This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.588701