The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Primary Emotional Systems and Emotional Regulation

Rachele Mariani, Alessia Renzi, Cinzia Di Monte, Elena Petrovska and Michela Di Trani
Additional contact information
Rachele Mariani: Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health Studies Sapienza, University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Alessia Renzi: Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health Studies Sapienza, University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Cinzia Di Monte: Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health Studies Sapienza, University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Elena Petrovska: Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 11530-0701, USA
Michela Di Trani: Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health Studies Sapienza, University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 11, 1-8

Abstract: (1) Background: The COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses a unique challenge as a severe global crisis affecting physical and psychological health. The main purpose of this work is to study the impact of a traumatic event while also observing the human ability to adapt. One of the first theories to study the adaptive importance of the evolutionary lineage of the affective systems is referred to as BrainMind (Panksepp, 2010). This study aims to explore whether primary emotional systems (PES) and emotion regulation (ER) strategies show differences between the pre- and post- lockdown period; and if positive systems and specific emotion regulation pre-pandemic act as a protective or risk factor for mental and physical wellbeing. (2) Methods: 98 participants who had participated in a previous study before the pandemic were re-contacted to refill the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale (ANPS) and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) after the outbreak of the pandemic with the addition of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90R). (3) Results: The results showed that the COVID-19 lockdown rules had an impact on Emotional Regulation and on a re-balancing of PES. Moreover, pre-pandemic expressive–suppressive ERQ strategies and ANPS SADNESS scores appeared as relevant risk factors, which predicted higher Global Severity Index (GSI) scores during lockdown. (4) Conclusions: The lockdown appears to have activated PLAY and CARE as protective systems, but has detuned the ability to positively reinterpret the situation.

Keywords: coronavirus pandemic; emotion regulation; primary emotional systems; mental and physical health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5742/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5742/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:11:p:5742-:d:563214

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().