Emotion Regulation and Dynamics of Moral Concerns During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic

TL;DR

This study analyzes social media data during the early COVID-19 pandemic, revealing unexpected increases in positive emotions and partisan divides in moral and emotional responses, highlighting social media's role in understanding collective affect.

Contribution

It demonstrates how social media sentiment analysis uncovers counter-intuitive emotional dynamics and partisan divides during a global crisis.

Findings

Rise in positive affect despite pandemic fears

Decrease in uncertainty linked to emotion regulation

Partisan divide in moral and emotional reactions emerged after first US death

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended daily life around the globe, posing a threat to public health. Intuitively, we expect that surging cases and deaths would lead to fear, distress and other negative emotions. However, using state-of-the-art methods to measure sentiment, emotions, and moral concerns in social media messages posted in the early stage of the pandemic, we see a counter-intuitive rise in positive affect. We hypothesize that the increase of positivity is associated with a decrease of uncertainty and emotion regulation. Finally, we identify a partisan divide in moral and emotional reactions that emerged after the first US death. Overall, these results show how collective emotional states have changed since the pandemic began, and how social media can provide a useful tool to understand, and even regulate, diverse patterns underlying human affect.