Challenges of the normalization and resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic on public mentality

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis with far-reaching implications for individuals, groups, organizations, and healthcare and mental health services and systems. As the fight against the pandemic is normalized and new virus variants persist, people's mental health has suffered, and more uncertainty has arisen. In response to such a situation, studying people's attitudes and compliance with these adjustments would inform public policies to curb the spread of the virus. There is a necessity for systematic and timely research on the pandemic and its consequences for individuals and society at large. That could permit better understanding and mitigation of the pandemic's negative effects and ensure the effectiveness of interventions. In this editorial, we will outline the contribution of this special issue on the new knowledge and understandings generated from social, clinical, and health psychology to guide the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the recent trends in the implications of COVID-19 pandemic for individual mental health, social attitudes, online/offline behaviors, and their psychological mechanisms.

The COVID-19 pandemic and individual mental health

In the context of COVID-19, it is particularly important to enhance people's mental health and well-being. To this end, researchers have conducted a series of investigations into the mechanisms by which the pandemic influences mental health. Zhang et al. (2022) showed that 41.9% of hospital pharmacists had mild to severe anxiety and depressive symptoms, and 29.4% had mild to severe anxiety and depressive symptoms. Ye et al. (2022) found that COVID-19-related stressful experiences were significantly associated with PTSD symptoms, where perceived control over the future and empathy significantly moderated the relationship. Ying et al. (2023) explored people's appreciation of three types of internet memes about the COVID-19 pandemic that conveyed feelings of humor, encouragement, and agreement. People preferred humorous and encouraging memes, suggesting that positive psychology and humor played a role in emotion regulation during the pandemic. Tan et al. (2023) showed that people's gratitude was negatively associated with anxiety, suggesting that gratitude and a sense of social connectedness enhance psychological well-being and quality of life during the pandemic. A study by Dizon et al. (2023) demonstrates the importance of hope as a viable resource in promoting individual well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Zhou et al. (2022) showed that past temporal focus negatively predicted meaning in life, whereas present and future temporal focus positively predicted meaning in life. In addition, meaning in life mediated the relationship between temporal focus and mental health indicators. Singh et al. (2022) explored protective factors that could help people build resilience, be healthy, and function positively under the COVID-19 epidemic. These results showed that although people may initially downplay the severity of the situation, they slowly recognize it and, as awareness becomes clearer, their psychological resources act as a buffer against the adverse effects of the epidemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and social attitudes

In addition to individual mental health, researchers have further explored the impact of COVID-19 at the societal level. For example, focusing on the physician population, Chen et al. (2022) explored the trajectory of change in physician–patient trust and found that a shift from moderate to high trust was observed in the blockade area and among those with high social support, and that social support moderated the shift from low to high trust. Wang et al. (2023) used big data on microblogs to verify whether the COVID-19 outbreak changed Chinese individualism and collectivism from a cultural perspective. Yang et al. (2023) found that transformational leadership was positively associated with the four subdimensions of post-traumatic growth as well as overall scores; while public trust in local government had no significant moderating or mediating role in these associations. Fernández et al. (2023) assessed the extent to which variables such as education level, socioeconomic status, and the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic predicted health protective behaviors (hygiene behaviors). In addition, Melotti and colleagues (2022) identified four different social representations that possessed different levels of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy theory belief, restrictive measures agreement, and expression of dissatisfaction with the outbreak. Fino et al. (2023) explored public understanding of the COVID-19 vaccine and the social representations that emerged from a corpus of user-generated comments posted on YouTube videos in the year following the World Health Organization's declaration of the COVID-19 as a pandemic. Jin et al. (2023) also explored whether COVID-19 elicited death awareness, evoked death anxiety, and further influenced overall mental health from an epidemic and mental health perspective, and assessed the role of the meaning of life in this context. Peng et al. (2023) found that death salience of COVID-19 lowered responders’ acceptance threshold, thereby increasing their tolerance for unfairness, thus, a society with relatively high fear of death may produce more distributional inequality by increasing people's tolerance for inequity.

Behavioral dimensions

Behavioral indicators are also covered in this special issues. Wei et al. (2022) found that negative stress coping among Chinese adolescents during COVID-19 partially mediated the relationship between psychological stress response and aggression, and that this indirect effect was moderated by emotion management skills. Zhang et al. (2022) found that negative emotions had a significant indirect effect on discouraged behaviors but a nonsignificant effect on promoted behaviors, and a significant effect on individual behavior but a nonsignificant effect on adherence to local policies. Kulesza et al. (2022) compared vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals’ assessments of the risk of infection with COVID-19 and the role of unrealistic optimism and social comparison. Results showed that there was an unrealistic optimism effect; participants estimated their risk of infection to be significantly lower than that of others.

Theories used in this special issue

The theoretical background of this collection involves a variety of theories and models. For example, in studies involving mental health, Ye et al. (2022) cited the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 2001). Wei et al. (2022) examined post-traumatic stress symptoms from the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1987). The general conceptual model of time perspective (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999) was used to explain the mediating role of life meaning between different categories of temporal focus and mental health (Zhou et al., 2022). Jin et al. (2023), based primarily on the terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg et al., 1986), found that death anxiety is a significant positive predictor of overall mental health and meaningfulness of life. The theoretical basis for Dizon et al.'s (2023) study is the locus-of-hope theory (Bernardo, 2010), which proposes that hope can be self-determined (internal hope) or may involve external factors (external family, peers, spiritual hope). Kulesza et al. (2022) based their study on the unrealistic optimism theory (Weinstein, 1980), which refers to the idea that people believe that negative events are less likely to happen to them than to others. Singh et al. utilized one of Martin Seligman's positive psychological concepts, the PERMA (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, & Accomplishments) model (Seligman, 2011), which proposes that psychological resources can help people not only adapt to adversity but also cope with the negative consequences of adversity.

For studies related to social attitude, Wei et al. (2022), from the perspective of functionalist emotion theory (FET), argued that emotion regulation is an adaptive function that makes an important contribution to social functioning and mental health (Aldao et al., 2010; Eisenberg et al., 2000). Zhang et al. (2022), from the perspective of social identity (Brown, 2000), indicated that group-based assessment generates group-based emotions such as trust and social satisfaction. Ying et al. (2023) from the perspective of the theory of psychological catharsis (Jackson, 1994), demonstrated that people's special preference for anger and aggressive feelings and attitudes is because aggressive expressions help to vent and relieve the tension and anxiety caused by the pandemic. The theoretical basis for Yang et al., (2023) is the transformational leadership theory (TTL; Bass, 1985). The main idea is that leaders motivate and inspire better performance by transforming the beliefs, attitudes, and values of their followers. Fino et al. (2023) base their research on the social representations theory (SRT; Moscovici, 2000), which has long been investigating the dichotomy between the consensual domain. Melotti et al. (2022), on the other hand, utilized the theory of social representation to emphasize that people's worldviews guide them in the fruits of social practice (Doise, 1992). Zhang et al. (2022) also argue from the theory of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966) that devaluation by policymakers can lead to noncompliance. To predict behaviors, Chen et al., (2022), based on the risk-perception hypothesis of trust, argued that trusting someone requires risk-taking, which increases vulnerability due to uncertainty and unpredictability of the trusted person's behavior (Moldoveanu & Baum, 2011). Based on the expansion-construction theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005), Zhang et al., (2022) predicted that positive and negative affective experiences would mediate the relationship between risk perception and anxiety and depressive symptoms in hospital pharmacists. Fernández et al. (2023) tested the health behavior integration model proposed by Betancourt and Flynn (Betancourt et al., 2010; Flynn et al., 2011) to verify whether the perceived level of risk and severity of the COVID-19 predicted the messenger's protective health behaviors, such as hygiene behaviors, mask use, and maintaining somatic distance.

Methodology

Appropriate methods depend on the availability of resources and timeframe (Scholz, 2023). One obstacle to conducting COVID19 related studies with high-quality research designs may be reflected in the fact that its impacts on people are more difficult to intervene experimentally. However, this special issue still includes several experimental studies. Ying et al. (2023) conducted a laboratory study using a series of internet memes as experimental materials; Peng et al. (2023) manipulated COVID-19 mortality salience in the laboratory and also built an evolutionary game model. Qualitative method was also used by Singh et al. (2022) to explore how people responded to the pandemic and the lockdown experience. Furthermore, Wang et al.'s (2023) research using Microblog crawler explored the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on collectivism and individualism. In another study, social representations appear in a corpus of user-generated comments posted on YouTube videos. This paper uses structural topic modeling to process text and identifies a solution containing 10 topics as the best solution for representing a corpus of textual data (Fino et al., 2023).

Doubtlessly the most convenient research method is the questionnaire survey. The study by Kulesza et al. (2022) used an online quasi-experimental and cohort approach. Four of the articles employed cross-sectional designs (Tan et al., 2023; Fernández et al., 2023; Yang et al., 2023; Zhang et al., 2022), while four other studies used a longitudinal design with 2-wave data (Chen et al., 2022; Wei et al., 2022; Ye et al., 2022).

Culture representativeness

In this special issue, study participants were drawn from all over the world and involved different cultural backgrounds. Most were from Asian counties (China, Philippines, India, and Malaysia), and others from Europe (United Kingdom, Poland, and Italy) and South America (Chile, Mexico, and Colombia). It is worth mentioning that Fernández et al. (2023) fused samples of participants from three countries, Chile, Mexico and Colombia, and were able to explore well the predictors of self-care COVID-19 behaviors in a cross-cultural context. Moreover, they found that the structural equation model fitted the data well and did not differ significantly between the three countries. However, all the three countries belong to South America, and therefore, cross-cultural comparisons between more geologically diverse countries are needed.

Conclusions

The goal of this special issue is to bring together a series of excellent publications that report empirical research on how the COVID-19 pandemic affects public mentality. In these studies, a number of classic and innovative theories were cited to make hypotheses and interpret results, which promoted the theoretical contributions of the issue. Moreover, several different and sophisticated research designs were adopted. It is a pity that no meta-analysis studies were used to aggregate the various individual studies. However, other study designs could help generate proactive and synergistic approaches in future times of crises.

To conclude, a deeper understanding of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on public mentality can be learnt from this series of research. We should consider more about what people need to cope with the challenges and crises posed by the pandemic. This will enable us to generate constructive and targeted ways to complement psychological, community, and national intervention schemes. Theories, like those outlined in this editorial and the other contributions to this special issue, describe not only the factors that contribute to the impacts, but also the corresponding health policies. Effective theories and models can help prevent the negative psychological impacts of COVID-19 and promote coping and resilience.