Anxious and Angry: Emotional Responses to the COVID-19 Threat
Abadi, David and Arnaldo, Irene and Fischer, Agneta (2021) Anxious and Angry: Emotional Responses to the COVID-19 Threat. Frontiers in Psychology, 12 (676116).
fpsyg-12-676116-1.pdf - Published Version
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676116
Original publication URL: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg...
The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic elicits a vast amount of anxiety. In the current study, we investigated how anxiety related to COVID-19 is associated with support for and compliance with governmental hygiene measures, and how these are influenced by populist attitudes, anger at the government, and conspiracy mentalities. We conducted an online survey in April 2020 in four different countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK; N = 2,031) using a cross-sectional design. Results showed that (1) anxiety related to COVID-19 is associated with conspiracy beliefs, anger at the government, and populist attitudes, and (2) support for and compliance with hygiene measures are both positively predicted by anxiety related to COVID-19; however, (3) support for hygiene measures is also predicted by populist attitudes and negatively by conspiracy mentalities, whereas compliance with hygiene measures is more strongly predicted by anger at transgressors (anger at people transgressing the hygiene measures). Consequently, although anxiety related to COVID-19 concerns the health of individual people, it also has political and social implications: anxiety is associated with an increase in anger, either at transgressors or the government.
Title in English:
Keywords in English:
anger, anxiety, conspiracy mentality, terror management theory (tmt), populism, threat, COVID-19 pandemic, hygiene measures
J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Institute for Political Science
Research funder:
European Union, Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action DEMOS grant no. 822590
Enikő Meiszterics
Related papers or data collections:
Boda, Zsolt (2019) Democratic Efficacy and the Varieties of Populism in Europe. [Data Collection]
Školkay, Andrej and Žúborová, Viera Populist Political Movement Sme rodina – Boris Kollár (We Are a Family – Boris Kollár). Central European political studies, 2019 (4). pp. 5-26. ISSN 1731-7517
Bene, Márton and Boda, Zsolt (2020) Conceptualizing Democratic Efficacy. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
Bennett, Samuel and Lipiński, Artur and Stępińska, Agnieszka and Abadi, David and Baloge, Martin and Bobba, Giuliano and Butkevičienė, Eglė and Brands, Charlotte and Fischer, Agneta and Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas and Hubé, Nicolas and Ianosev, Bogdan and Karamanidou, Lena and Klinge, Sune and Kocián, Jiří and Korkut, Umut and Magre, Jaume and Mancosu, Moreno and Marincea, Adina and Matic, Dejan and Medir, Luis and Morkevičius, Vaidas and Pano, Esther and Roncarolo, Franca and Sahin, Osman and Seddone, Antonella and Školkay, Andrej and Szabó, Gabriella and Tsatsanis, Emmanouil and Žvaliauskas, Giedrius (2020) Populist Communication on Social Media. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
Boda, Zsolt and Gorczeski, Vinicius (2020) DEMOS-ANNUAL REPORT:2019. Project Report. -.
Castellà, Josep Maria and Simonelli, Marco Antonio (2020) On the Institutional Context of Populism. Working Paper. -.
Kubát, Michal and Mejstřík, Martin and Baloge, Martin and Bobba, Giuliano and Castillero, Daniel and Cremonesi, Cristina and Dobos, Gábor and Magre Ferran, Jaume and Hubé, Nicolas and Hüning, Hendrik and Ianosev, Bogdan and Klinge, Sune and Korkut, Umut and Krunke, Helle and Lembcke, Oliver and Lipinski, Artur and Mancosu, Moreno and Matic, Dejan and Medir, Lluis and Morkevičius, Vaidas and Pano, Esther and Roncarolo, Franca and Sahin, Osman and Seddone, Antonella and Školkay, Andrej and Sotiropoulos, Dimitri A. and Tsatsanis, Emmanouil and Wineroither, David M. and Žúborová, Viera and Žvaliauskas, Giedrius (2020) Populist Parties in Contemporary Europe. Working Paper. -.
Korkut, Umut (2020) Hungary Coronavirus Emergency Legislation 2020. Public Jurist.
Morkevičius, Vaidas and Raleckas, Rimantas and Žvaliauskas, Giedrius and Butkevičienė, Eglė and Boda, Zsolt and Bene, Márton (2020) Measuring Democratic Efficacy. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
Bartha, Attila and Boda, Zsolt and Szikra, Dorottya (2020) When Populist Leaders Govern: Conceptualising Populism in Policy Making. Politics and Governance, 8 (3). ISSN 2183–2463
Bene, Márton Does context matter? A cross-country investigation of the effects of the media context on external and internal political efficacy (accepted manuscript at International Journal of Comparative Sociology).
Bartha, Attila and Bazoti, Pery and Benedek, István and Butkevičien, Eglė and Katsikas, Dimitrios and Morkevičius, Vaidas and Sahin, Osman and Schlett, Bálint and Žvaliauskas, Giedrius (2020) What Kind of Public Policies Trigger Populism. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
Ianosev, Bogdan and Sahin, Osman (2020) Can human evolution help us understand the support for populist movements? Political Insight, 11 (3). pp. 26-29. ISSN 2041-9066
Ozge, Ozduzen and Umut, Korhut and Cansu, Ozduzen (2020) 'Refugees are not welcome': Digital racism, online placemaking and the evolving categorization of Syrians in Turkey. New Media & Society, 22 (6). ISSN 1461-7315
Andreu, Josep Maria Castellà and Simonelli, Marco Antonio and Bencze, Mátyás and Gárdos Orosz, Fruzsina and Szente, Zoltán and Krunke, Helle and Klinge, Sune (2020) Populist constitutionalism. Its impact on the constitution, the judiciary and the role of the EU. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
Körtvélyesi, Zsolt and Majtényi, Balázs (2020) Justifying supranational responses to the anti-constitutionalist challenge: Applying liberal multiculturalism as a background theory. Global Constitutionalism. pp. 1-24. ISSN 2045-3825
Krunke, Helle and Hovden, Katarina (2020) Transnational Solidarity Among European Cities. In: Transnational Solidarity. Cambridge University Press, pp. 393-417.
Adina, Marincea and Andrej, Školkay (2020) Boris Kollár and OĽaNO Party Communication on Facebook. Politické Vedy (online), 23 (4). pp. 109-136. ISSN 1335 – 2741
Sahin, Osman (2021) How populists securitize elections to win them: the 2015 double elections in Turkey. New Perspectives on Turkey. pp. 1-24. ISSN 1305-3299
Boda, Zsolt (2021) Polarization and the disintegration of the polity. Reflections on populism and the future of liberal democracies. In: The future of liberal democracies: The rise of populism, 4 February 2021, Online webinar organised by the Hungarian Europe Society. (Unpublished)
Bencze, Mátyás (2020) Explaining Judicial Populism in Hungary – a Legal Realist Approach. Iuris Dictio. pp. 83-96. ISSN 2528-7834
Bobba, Giuliano and Hubé, Nicolas (2021) COVID-19 and Populism: A Sui Generis Crisis. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Sahin, Osman and Ianosev, Bogdan (2021) UK: Between managed moderation and far-right conspiracy theories. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Hüning, Hendrik and Mechtenberg, Lydia and Wang, Stephanie W. (2021) Detecting argumentative discourse in online chat experiments. Working Paper. -.
Magre, Jaume and Medir, Lluis and Pano, Esther (2021) Spain: Is ideology back in populist discourse? In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Bertero, Arturo and Seddone, Antonella (2021) Italy: Populist in the mirror, (de)politicizing the COVID-19 from government and opposition. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Baloge, Martin and Hubé, Nicolas (2021) France: Governmental unpreparedness as a discursive opportunity for populists. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Lembcke, Oliver W. (2021) Germany: The AfD's Staggering between Reason and Resistance. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Bene, Márton and Boda, Zsolt (2021) Hungary: Crisis as usual - Populist governance and the pandemic. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Císař, Ondřej and Kubát, Michal (2021) Czech Republic: Running the State like a Family Business. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Lipiński, Artur (2021) Poland: 'If we don't elect the President, the country will plunge into chaos'. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Bobba, Giuliano and Hubé, Nicolas (2021) Between mitigation and dramatization: The effect of the COVID-19 crisis on populists' discourses and strategies. In: Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030660109. ISBN 978-3-030-66011-6, DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-66011-6
Mechtenberg, Lydia and Perino, Grischa and Treich, Nicolas and Tyran, Jean-Robert and Wang, Stephanie W. (2021) Self-Signaling in Moral Voting. Working Paper. -, Discussion Paper Series, CEPR Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, UK.
Lipiński, Artur (2020) Populism and media opportunity structures. The case of new media. Władza sądzenia (Power of judgement). ISSN 2300-1690
Cabot, Pere-Lluís Huguet and Dankers, Verna and Abadi, David and Fischer, Agneta and Shutova, Ekaterina (2020) The Pragmatics behind Politics: Modelling Metaphor, Framing and Emotion in Political Discourse. ACL Anthology.
Huguet-Cabot, Pere-Lluís and Abadi, David and Fischer, Agneta and Shutova, Ekaterina (2021) Us vs. Them: A Dataset of Populist Attitudes, News Bias and Emotions. In: Proceedings of the 16th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Main Volume, Anthology ID:2021.eacl-main.165. Association for Computational Linguistics, EACL, pp. 1921-1945.
Fischer, Agneta and Brands, Charlotte and Abadi, David (2020) The Expression of Right-Wing Populism in the Netherlands across Facebook Posts. Other. -, OSFPreprints.
Lironi, Elisa and Nahr, Hendrik and Nugent, Rhys (2021) Civic Strategies Addressing Populism - Initiatives to safeguard liberal democracies. Working Paper. -.
Klinge, Sune and Krunke, Helle and Fallentin Nyborg, Annemette and Rytter, Jens Elo (2020) Covid-19 and Constitutional Law in Denmark. In: Covid-19 and Constitutional Law. Covid-19 et droit constitutionnel. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual. ISBN 978-607-30-4290-1
Bene, Márton and Boda, Zsolt (2021) Democratic Efficacy and Populist Attitudes: A Conceptual and Empirical Exploration. In: Current Populism in Europe: Gender-Backlash and Counter-strategies. HBS Prague, pp. 65-78. ISBN 978-80-88289-26-5
Bertero, Arturo (2021) The COVID-19 Related Communication of Italian Politicians and Its Success on Facebook. In: Current Populism in Europe: Gender-Backlash and Counter-strategies. HBS Prague, pp. 79-94. ISBN 978-80-88289-26-5
Školkay, Andrej (2021) The Cause and Retort of Populism: A Formal Political Reasoning (Politics) Without Distinct Ideology as a Response to a Political-Moral Crisis – Turning Laclau's Theory into a Research Tool. In: Current Populism in Europe: Gender-Backlash and Counter-strategies. HBS Prague, pp. 95-113. ISBN 978-80-88289-26-5
Darminova, Nasiya (2021) Rule of law vs. Poland and Hungary – An inconsistent approach? Hungarian Journal of Legal Studies, 60 (3). pp. 236-259. ISSN 2560-1067
Gárdos Orosz, Fruzsina (2021) The reference to constitutional traditions in populist constitutionalism – The case of Hungary. Hungarian Journal of Legal Studies. ISSN 2560-1067
Mihajlović, Borko and Turanjanin, Veljko (2020) When populists govern: The case of economic and criminal justice policy in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Archive for Legal and Social Sciences, 2 (1). pp. 5-24.
Krešić, Boris (2020) Populism and pronatality policy with reference to BIH. Archive for Legal and Social Sciences, 2 (1). pp. 25-37.
Gárdos Orosz, Fruzsina and Szente, Zoltán, eds. (2021) Populist Challenges to Constitutional Interpretation in Europe and Beyond (1st ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9781003148944
Bartha, Attila and Kopasz, Marianna and Takács, Judit (2020) Are the Populists Doing Better? Public Policy Lessons of the Coronavirus Pandemic: Management of the Pandemic in Europe's Liberal and Populist Democracies. In: Vírusba oltott politika: Világjárvány és politikatudomány (Virus Vaccinated by Politics: Pandemics and Political Sciences vaccinated). Napvilág Kiadó, Budapest, pp. 89-108. ISBN 978-963-338-465-7
Fallentin Nyborg, Annemette and Klinge, Sune and Krunke, Helle and Rytter, Jens Elo (2020) Covid-19 and emergency Laws in Denmark. Svensk Juristtidning (10). p. 1098.
Sotiropoulos, Dimitri A. (2021) Populism, Party Politics and the Economic Crisis in Greece: a Comparison with the case of Portugal. In: Greece and the Euro: from crisis to recovery. Hellenic Observatory, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK., https://www.lse.ac.uk/Hellenic-Observatory/Publications/Staff-Books-and-Publications, pp. 252-282.
Abadi, David and Cabot, Pere-Lluís Huguet and Duyvendak, Jan Willem and Fischer, Agneta (2020) Socio-Economic or Emotional Predictors of Populist Attitudes across Europe. Working Paper. -, PsyArXiv Preprints.
Horváthy, Balázs and Szép, Viktor (2021) Populist policy positions in the European Parliament - The Eurozone Crisis. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
Karamanidou, Lena (2021) Populist Parties: Migration Policy and Discourses in the European Parliament. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
Gruszczynski, Lukasz and Friedery, Réka and Crescenzi, Andrea and Dimitriadi, Angeliki and du Vall, Katarzyna and Forastiero, Rosita and Körtvélyesi, Zsolt and Školkay, Andrej and Szép, Viktor (2021) The Populist Challenge of Common EU Policies - The Case of (Im)migration. Working Paper. -. (Unpublished)
https://openarchive.tk.mta.hu/id/eprint/488