The effect of induced COVID-19-related fear on psychological distance and time perception

ABSTRACT

Emotional experience can influence cognitive estimates such as perceived psychological distance and time judgements. These estimators are crucial in threatening situations like the COVID-19 pandemic because the subjective perception of the closeness of a potential infection might influence behaviour. However, to date it remains unclear how fear affects these estimates. We report on data from N = 183 participants collected in Germany during the summer of 2020, when a “second wave” of COVID-19 infections was still only on the horizon of public awareness. We induced COVID-19-related fear in members of one group and compared their estimates of psychological distance and time judgements to those of a neutral group. Fear induction influenced these conjoint estimates in the way that an increase in infection rates appeared farther away and of shorter duration. Mediation analysis revealed inverse effects of changes in valence and ratings of Fear of COVID-19 on psychological distance. Possible explanations for these effects are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological distance
• fear induction
• passage of time judgements
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in osf.io at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/3YP2W.

Notes

1 Please note that we had not specified any procedure for excluding participants in the preregistration. As it is important to ensure that the data that is used for the analyses is of sufficient quality, however, we chose the exclusion rules described in the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.