Suppression May Improve Adaptation to Worry When Facing Uncertainty: Studying COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with increased uncertainty, fear and worry in everyone's life. The effect of changes in daily life has been studied widely, but we do not know how emotion-regulation strategies influence adaptation to a new situation to help them overcome worry in the face of uncertainty. Here, 1,064 self-selected Farsi speaking participants completed an online battery of questionnaires that measured fear of virus and illness, worry, intolerance of uncertainty, and emotion regulation (two subscales: reappraisal, suppression). We also documented the number of daily COVID-19 cases and deaths due to COVID-19 on the day in which participants completed the questionnaire. Our findings suggest a correlation between contamination fear and the number of daily-confirmed cases (r = 0.11), and the number of reported deaths due to COVID-19 (r = 0.09). Worry mediated the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and fear of virus and illness (b = 0.16, 0.1141 < CI < 0.2113). In addition, suppression moderated the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and worry (p < 0.01). Our results suggest that suppression (at least in the short term) can be an adaptive response to the worry associated with uncertainty. Suppression can reduce worry, which in turn can decrease fear of contamination and improve adaptation to social distancing requirements. Although, the observed correlations were significant, but considering the sample size, they are not strong, and they should be interpreted cautiously.