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Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19

BACKGROUND: Fear is an evolutionary adaptive emotion that serves to protect the organism from harm. Once a threat diminishes, fear should also dissipate as otherwise fear may become chronic and pathological. While actual threat of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., number of infections, hospitalizations,...

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Autores principales: Mertens, Gaëtan, Lodder, Paul, Smeets, Tom, Duijndam, Stefanie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9650507/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36372124
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2022.11.008
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author Mertens, Gaëtan
Lodder, Paul
Smeets, Tom
Duijndam, Stefanie
author_facet Mertens, Gaëtan
Lodder, Paul
Smeets, Tom
Duijndam, Stefanie
author_sort Mertens, Gaëtan
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Fear is an evolutionary adaptive emotion that serves to protect the organism from harm. Once a threat diminishes, fear should also dissipate as otherwise fear may become chronic and pathological. While actual threat of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths) has substantially varied over the course of the pandemic, it remains unclear whether (subjective) fear has followed a similar pattern. METHOD: To examine the development of fear of COVID-19 during the pandemic and investigate potential predictors of chronic fear, we conducted a large online longitudinal study (N = 2000) using the Prolific platform between April 2020 and June 2021. Participants were voluntary response samples and consisted of residents of 34 different countries. The Fear of the Coronavirus Questionnaire (FCQ) and several other demographic and psychological measures were completed monthly. RESULTS: Overall, we find that fear steadily decreased since April 2020. Additional analyses showed that elevated fear was predicted by region (i.e., North America > Europe), anxious traits, gender, risks for loved ones, general health, and media use. LIMITATIONS: The interpretation of the results of this study is limited by the non-representativeness of the sample and the lack of data points between August 2020 and June 2021. CONCLUSIONS: This study helps to characterize the trajectory of fear levels throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and establish several relevant predictors of increased fear.
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spelling pubmed-96505072022-11-14 Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19 Mertens, Gaëtan Lodder, Paul Smeets, Tom Duijndam, Stefanie J Affect Disord Research Paper BACKGROUND: Fear is an evolutionary adaptive emotion that serves to protect the organism from harm. Once a threat diminishes, fear should also dissipate as otherwise fear may become chronic and pathological. While actual threat of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths) has substantially varied over the course of the pandemic, it remains unclear whether (subjective) fear has followed a similar pattern. METHOD: To examine the development of fear of COVID-19 during the pandemic and investigate potential predictors of chronic fear, we conducted a large online longitudinal study (N = 2000) using the Prolific platform between April 2020 and June 2021. Participants were voluntary response samples and consisted of residents of 34 different countries. The Fear of the Coronavirus Questionnaire (FCQ) and several other demographic and psychological measures were completed monthly. RESULTS: Overall, we find that fear steadily decreased since April 2020. Additional analyses showed that elevated fear was predicted by region (i.e., North America > Europe), anxious traits, gender, risks for loved ones, general health, and media use. LIMITATIONS: The interpretation of the results of this study is limited by the non-representativeness of the sample and the lack of data points between August 2020 and June 2021. CONCLUSIONS: This study helps to characterize the trajectory of fear levels throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and establish several relevant predictors of increased fear. The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2023-02-01 2022-11-11 /pmc/articles/PMC9650507/ /pubmed/36372124 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2022.11.008 Text en © 2022 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Research Paper
Mertens, Gaëtan
Lodder, Paul
Smeets, Tom
Duijndam, Stefanie
Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19
title Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19
title_full Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19
title_fullStr Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19
title_short Pandemic panic? Results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of COVID-19
title_sort pandemic panic? results of a 14-month longitudinal study on fear of covid-19
topic Research Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9650507/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36372124
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2022.11.008
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