And what if…? Although worry represents an attempt to deal with danger, it intensifies anxiety by leading an individual toward exaggerated catastrophic interpretations of the probability and severity of a threat Clark and Beck, Within cognitive behavioral therapy hereinafter CBT , cognition is held to affect emotion, behavior, and physiology through our appraisals of ourselves, others, and the world Beck, ; Beck et al.
Additionally, the extent to which we are able to shift our attention away from a focus on threat or loss or the extent to which we get stuck in ruminations or worry affects our reactions too Nolen—Hoeksema, ; Bennett-Levy et al.
Tendency to chain catastrophic thoughts in an unproductive and repetitive way intensifies anxiety and hampers the solution-finding process Hong, ; McLaughlin et al. The psychological reactions of an individual to a pandemic cannot be observed in isolation from interpersonal and wider social factors. The regulation and resolution of a pandemic depend to a great extent on government policies and measures, activities of other community members as well as the capacity of health institutions to provide adequate services to individuals in a timely manner.
A lack of trust in social systems leads to a feeling of insecurity Giddens, and higher anxiety over personal and public security Tang et al. In the context of the SARS crisis Cheung and Tse, , as well as the MERS crisis Kim and Kim, , people naturally relied on other people or organizations that could provide information and take action to solve the problem.
In order to gain a better understanding of the underlying mechanism, and to formulate hypotheses, we turn our attention to CBT theory. The CBT has long established the key role of threat appraisal in fear and anxiety. Research into IU, a more newly established construct, has largely concentrated on the contributions of trait IU to anxiety. Yet, several issues remain unclear, including whether IU in anxiety-provoking situations is sufficient in itself — independent of threat appraisal — in eliciting high levels of anxiety Milne et al.
The factors which are included in threat appraisal are an estimation of the probability of a dangerous incident occurring and the negativity of its impact, as well as the estimation of the coping resources and available rescue factors Beck et al. We have presupposed that in the situation of the pandemic there are many external factors that affect the threat appraisal in the community. Trust in political institutions that are responsible for adequately managing the response to the pandemic, trust in health institutions which are responsible for providing health care to those who are in need as well as trust in other people and their willingness to adhere to prevention measures are relevant factors for individual threat appraisal of dangerous incidents.
To understand the onset of fear and anxiety, the perception of control over stimuli that signal danger is essential Chorpita and Barlow, An individual who is faced with unknowns would feel the least threatened when unknowns are encountered in sufficiently controllable contexts Carleton, a.
So, if a person believes that relevant social institutions are reliable and able to handle the various threats, the person will perceive the situation, although being serious, as being under some control.
In that case, there are fewer triggers that can activate IU and, consequently, the fears of coronavirus and other pandemic related fears may be less intensive. On the other hand, a person who does not have confidence in the social institutions would perceive far more threats which would activate IU, making the fears of coronavirus and the pandemic related fears more intensive.
Therefore, our study assumes that the COVID pandemic provides an opportunity to understand better the interplay between relevant intrapsychic and social factors and their relation to fears related to the pandemic.
The main aim of this study was to test a model including both intrapsychic and social factors relevant for understanding fears of the coronavirus and of the consequences of the COVID pandemic see Figure 1.
Figure 1. Simplified representation of the initial model of associations between psychosocial and cognitive variables and COVID related anxiety and worry. In the study, we are going to test two main hypotheses. The first one is focused on the intrapsychic level, and the second one is focused on the relationship between relevant social factors and pandemic related fear and anxiety:. The sample was obtained by means of online questionnaires distributed between April 25th and May 4th, During the given period, a state of emergency was in force in Serbia and a curfew was introduced due to the COVID pandemic.
Consequently, an invitation to participate was shared on social media. Participation was voluntary and participants were not paid for their contribution. The sample included 1, adult participants, of whom 1, were women While completing our survey, participants 8. Participants provided their answers on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 indicates a high level of distrust and 10 indicates a high level of trust e.
The composite reliability coefficient for the component was 0. Participants provided their answers on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 indicates complete dissatisfaction and 10 indicates complete satisfaction.
EFA showed that trust and satisfaction items related to the same institution or actor are highly correlated, so we included all trust and satisfaction items in the same factor analysis.
The first factor was related to trust and satisfaction with political institutions, which we labeled as Trust in political institutions President, Government, local authorities, media, and National COVID Response Team , and the second one was related to trust and satisfaction with health institutions and actors, which we named Trust in health institutions doctors and other staff in health institutions, GPs, equipment, and procedures in health institutions.
The composite reliability for trust in political institutions was 0. To measure social support, we have developed six items similar to those measuring social capital in the Personal Social Capital Scale Chen et al. Participants were asked to estimate their confidence in getting emotional support from six types of others partner, parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues.
Answers were provided on a scale from 0 not confident at all to 10 fully confident , so the higher total score indicated a higher level of perceived social support and vice versa. The longer item version of the scale was adapted, and then shortened in accordance with the recommendations by Carleton et al. Items with more than one factor loading, items with loading under 0. The result was the item Serbian version with a 5-point Likert scale consisting of items 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 19, 20, and 25 from the original scale e.
The scale measures the overall level of IU, higher scores indicating greater levels of intolerance, with a possibility of calculating scores for two subscales prospective and inhibitory uncertainty. We only used the overall score in our study. The Serbian adaptation of the scale was found to have good psychometric properties.
The instrument has 16 items with a 5-point Likert scale e. Higher scores indicate higher levels of worry and vice versa. The scale includes seven items aimed at measuring fear of the COVID virus, with an emphasis on emotional and physiological arousal. The examination of the Serbian translation replicated previous findings. EFA revealed one factor structure see Supplementary Material , explaining We first conducted a short qualitative study, where we asked 34 people about their fears regarding the COVID pandemic.
Upon analysis of their answers, we were able to categorize the content of their fears into five distinct categories family finances, job, mental health, social relationships, and overall life in the future. The items had satisfactory corrected item-total correlations ranging from 0. EFA revealed one factor solution explaining The total score was calculated by adding the answers for each item, so the possible total score ranged from 5 to Although we acknowledge that the scale needs further development, it showed satisfactory properties, so we decided to use it for the purpose of this study, given its exploratory nature.
There were no scales measuring fear of consequences of the pandemic available at the beginning of our study, but alternatives were developed later e. To test our main hypotheses, we performed path analysis. The model also included direct effects of predictors and IU on the outcome variables. We also allowed correlations between the residuals of the fear of COVID and the fear of consequences of the pandemic, given that these constructs are strongly mutually associated and that their association can be a result of exogenous variables that are not part of our study e.
Descriptive statistics for the variables used in this study are presented in Table 1. As we can see, there are no extreme values in any direction for most variables, which was to be expected given that we collected our sample among the general population. One exception is that participants in our study showed quite a low level of trust in political institutions. Correlations between the variables are displayed in Table 2.
Most of the resulting associations are in accordance with our preliminary assumptions. Psychosocial variables trust in health institutions, trust in other people, and social support are positively correlated with each other from a very small positive association e. Among the psychosocial variables trust in other people and social support have a somewhat higher negative correlation with the measures of cognitive and emotional dysfunction.
On the other hand, the cognitive and emotional variables are moderately to highly correlated with each other and with the measures of COVID related fears which that is in line with theoretical expectations and previous research studies.
The serial mediation model Figure 1 was tested using path analysis. Based on the significance level of the calculated estimates, we trimmed the non-significant paths from the model, in a backward step-by-step procedure.
The resulting model with standardized values of direct effects path coefficients , correlations, and proportion of explained variance is shown in Figure 2. The percentage of the explained variance of the mediator variables was 4. Figure 2. Correlations between independent variables are given in Table 2 , thus are not presented here.
Path coefficients are standardised regression coefficients. R 2 values for endogenous variables are presented next to the corner of each variable.
Values of total effects of the predictors on the mediators and outcomes, and IU on the outcomes, and values of indirect effects of the predictors and IU on the outcomes, with the corresponding standard errors and p -values, are shown in Tables 3 , 4 , respectively.
The resulting model had very good fit indices. We can conclude that the model is consistent with the data, so it might represent a possible pattern of mutual relationships between the variables used in this study. The aim of the study was to formulate and validate a model depicting potential relationships between the fear of the coronavirus and of the consequences of the COVID pandemic, IU, and the tendency to worry, as well as various social factors.
The data fits well with the predictions of the model and the two hypotheses formulated based on the model. Based on the final model, it can also be concluded that the COVID related fears are related more strongly to intrapsychic variables — IU and tendency to worry — than to variables operationalizing social context relevant for coping with pandemic at the social and individual level see Figure 2 and Table 3.
Our findings regarding the connection between IU and the fears of the coronavirus and the consequences of the pandemic are in accordance with numerous earlier findings. It is known that individuals who are intolerant of uncertainty will perceive many more sources of danger in their daily life and have more reactions of hypervigilance when they are faced with uncertain or ambiguous situations Dugas et al.
For those prone to IU, the possibility of negative outcomes triggers biased interpretations of the situation that serve to increase worry and anxiety Ladouceur et al. Research conducted during the H1N1 virus pandemic indicates a significant positive correlation between IU and fear of the virus Taha et al. However, our results also suggest that IU has an indirect impact on the fears of the coronavirus and consequences of the pandemic by increasing the tendency to worry.
According to research findings, IU is a robust predictor of worry Ladouceur et al. Therefore, people tend to worry about numerous things such as health, family, profession, finances, etc. Yet, a tendency to chain catastrophic interpretations in a repetitive and unproductive way intensifies anxiety and hampers the solution-finding process e.
Our findings also highlight the need to direct future research toward identifying additional mechanisms through which IU influences fears during a pandemic. Recent research suggests that the fear of dangerousness of the coronavirus itself, is a part of a broader concept consisting of several interconnected symptoms, including fears about socioeconomic consequences of COVID, COVID related xenophobia, compulsive checking and reassurance seeking, and traumatic stress symptoms Taylor et al.
Reassurance seeking and checking make the threat more predictable and controllable Taylor et al. However, these strategies can amplify COVID related fears and worries as they expose a person to an even greater number of fear-evoking stimuli. The findings also point out the complex role that social variables might have in the occurrence of fears of the coronavirus and of the consequences of the pandemic.
The final model suggests that the social variables included in the model might be related to fears of the coronavirus and of the consequences of the pandemic in a direct and indirect way, although their effects are relatively small. Out of these variables, trust in health institutions has the greatest impact on the fears of the coronavirus and of the consequences of the pandemic directly and indirectly via IU.
These findings are in accordance with the earlier ones, indicating that in health-threatening situations, an increase in trust in different institutions and organizations is accompanied by a decrease in fears and anxiety Sapp and Bird, ; Tateno and Yokoyama, Our research complements the existing knowledge corpus by indicating that some of these relationships might be indirect ones via their relation to relevant intrapsychic variables.
Regarding trust in other people, our findings show that a higher trust in other people is associated with a lower level of fears of the coronavirus and of the consequences of the pandemic solely indirectly through its relation to the IU and the tendency to worry. As previously established, trust in other people friends, acquaintances, strangers, etc.
An explanation of this finding might be related to the fact that persons with a higher trust in other people may perceive a lower level of risks related to the pandemic. In a pandemic like this one, it is important to build a sense of togetherness in the society because when one has trust that other people will behave responsibly, she or he will find it easier to tolerate uncertainty and will worry less, which could reduce levels of fears of the coronavirus and the consequences of the pandemic.
Furthermore, our results indicate that social support is related to the COVID related fears both directly and indirectly. This photo shows an explosion near the summit of the West Mata volcano within the Pacific Ocean; the image area is about 1. Download larger version jpg, 1. Heat within the asthenosphere creates convection currents that cause tectonic plates to move several centimeters per year relative to each other. If two tectonic plates collide, they form a convergent plate boundary.
Usually, one of the converging plates will move beneath the other, a process known as subduction. Deep trenches are features often formed where tectonic plates are being subducted and earthquakes are common.
As the sinking plate moves deeper into the mantle, fluids are released from the rock causing the overlying mantle to partially melt. Today, these theories serve as the foundation upon which we understand the geologic processes that shape the Earth.
Scientists look to these landforms and geologic events as evidence of plate tectonics, helping them both understand what happened in the past as well as predict what Earth will look like in the future. The five activities in the Plate Tectonics module build a systems view of plate tectonics, engaging students in data exploration about plate boundaries and experimentation via computer-based models of plate motion.
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