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Coronashaming: Interpersonal Affect Worsening in Contexts of COVID-19 Rule Violations

Coronashaming: Interpersonal Affect Worsening in Contexts of COVID-19 Rule Violations
Coronashaming: Interpersonal Affect Worsening in Contexts of COVID-19 Rule Violations

Experiencing empathy for others has been linked to worsening others’ feelings against their wishes. These paternalistic empathic goals have been theorised to happen at the dyad level when an agent aims to worsen a target’s emotional state. They may also operate at a broader level when agents are third-party observers of COVID-19 lockdown rule violations. In these instances, agents can impact transgressors’ affect engaging in Coronashaming. In three studies, we measured British people’s (N total = 767) vulnerability (Study 1), age (Studies 2 and 3), and empathy towards COVID-19 victims and presented them with different scenarios depicting a breach of lockdown rules to assess the emotions participants wanted to inflict in transgressor, the strategies used, and whether they wanted stricter rules to be enforced. Results confirmed shame as the emotion preferred to induce in violators, with this preference linked to higher use of engagement strategies (i.e. to make transgressors understand what they did wrong). Finally, empathy was positively linked to higher affect worsening and wanting stricter rules to be enforced. This suggests that empathy towards potential victims of COVID-19 rules violations can motivate people to worsen the feelings of transgressors.

interpersonal emotion regulation, affect worsening, regulation strategies, shame, COVID-19, COVID-19, shame, regulation strategies, affect worsening, Interpersonal emotion regulation
0269-9931
López-Pérez, Belen
a5e5cdb4-62fe-4e39-84b3-bb901381df01
Hanoch, Yaniv
3cf08e80-8bda-4d3b-af1c-46c858aa9f39
Gummerum, Michaela
321a449f-cb87-4574-8ee8-98c85c967e27
López-Pérez, Belen
a5e5cdb4-62fe-4e39-84b3-bb901381df01
Hanoch, Yaniv
3cf08e80-8bda-4d3b-af1c-46c858aa9f39
Gummerum, Michaela
321a449f-cb87-4574-8ee8-98c85c967e27

López-Pérez, Belen, Hanoch, Yaniv and Gummerum, Michaela (2021) Coronashaming: Interpersonal Affect Worsening in Contexts of COVID-19 Rule Violations. Cognition and Emotion. (doi:10.1080/02699931.2021.2013778).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Experiencing empathy for others has been linked to worsening others’ feelings against their wishes. These paternalistic empathic goals have been theorised to happen at the dyad level when an agent aims to worsen a target’s emotional state. They may also operate at a broader level when agents are third-party observers of COVID-19 lockdown rule violations. In these instances, agents can impact transgressors’ affect engaging in Coronashaming. In three studies, we measured British people’s (N total = 767) vulnerability (Study 1), age (Studies 2 and 3), and empathy towards COVID-19 victims and presented them with different scenarios depicting a breach of lockdown rules to assess the emotions participants wanted to inflict in transgressor, the strategies used, and whether they wanted stricter rules to be enforced. Results confirmed shame as the emotion preferred to induce in violators, with this preference linked to higher use of engagement strategies (i.e. to make transgressors understand what they did wrong). Finally, empathy was positively linked to higher affect worsening and wanting stricter rules to be enforced. This suggests that empathy towards potential victims of COVID-19 rules violations can motivate people to worsen the feelings of transgressors.

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COVID Cognition and Emotion_revision2_MG - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 29 November 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 9 December 2021
Published date: 10 December 2021
Keywords: interpersonal emotion regulation, affect worsening, regulation strategies, shame, COVID-19, COVID-19, shame, regulation strategies, affect worsening, Interpersonal emotion regulation

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 453068
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/453068
ISSN: 0269-9931
PURE UUID: 3aa56fce-bd8c-4226-9c6d-fe5e90818181
ORCID for Yaniv Hanoch: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9453-4588

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 07 Jan 2022 17:51
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 06:59

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Contributors

Author: Belen López-Pérez
Author: Yaniv Hanoch ORCID iD
Author: Michaela Gummerum

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