How Does COVID-19 Risk Perception Affect Sense of Control? The Roles of Death Anxiety and Confucian Coping

Lianqiong Huang, Yubo Hou (), Zhaoyang Sun and Qi Wang ()
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Lianqiong Huang: School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Yubo Hou: School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Zhaoyang Sun: School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Qi Wang: College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: This research examined the impact of COVID-19 risk perception on sense of control, testing the hypotheses that COVID-19 risk perception would reduce sense of control and that this effect would be mediated by death anxiety and moderated by Confucian coping. A series of six studies were conducted with Chinese participants ( N = 2202) and employed different research designs in lab and real-life settings. Across the studies, we found that the perceived risk of COVID-19 impaired sense of control. Studies 3a to 5 further revealed that death anxiety mediated the adverse effect of COVID-19 risk perception on sense of control, and Studies 4 to 5 revealed that Confucian coping strategies alleviated the adverse effect of COVID-19 risk perception on sense of control. These findings shed new light on the psychological impact of risk perception in times of crisis and identify mitigating factors and boundary conditions.

Keywords: COVID-19 risk perception; sense of control; death anxiety; Confucian coping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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