Flattening the curve: COVID-19 induced a decrease in arousal for positive and an increase in arousal for negative words

Abstract

In this study, we collected affective ratings of emotional valence and arousal for 882 Serbian words and compared their values at three points in time: before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (2018), during the COVID-19 lockdown (2020) and after the government measures were abandoned (2022). Although valence ratings were more stable than arousal ratings, we did not observe a significant change in either valence or arousal ratings across the time points. A more detailed look into the data revealed the change in arousal that was different across the valence values. Our analyses demonstrated that, upon the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, emotionally negative words elicited higher arousal ratings, whereas emotionally positive words elicited lower arousal ratings. It revealed that our participants became more sensitive to the negative content and less sensitive to the positive content. We hypothesized that this pattern could be linked to reduced resilience and consequently could represent a mental health risk.