Learning it the hard way - how enjoying life and positive appraisal buffer the negative effects of stressors on mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic

Anna Daniels; Sarah A Wellan; Henrik Walter

doi:10.1016/j.jadr.2021.100200

Learning it the hard way - how enjoying life and positive appraisal buffer the negative effects of stressors on mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic

J Affect Disord Rep. 2021 Dec:6:100200. doi: 10.1016/j.jadr.2021.100200. Epub 2021 Jul 21.

Authors

Anna Daniels^{1

2}, Sarah A Wellan^{1

2}, Henrik Walter^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences CCM, Research Division of Mind and Brain, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
² Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Faculty of Philosophy, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Berlin, Germany.

Abstract

Background: Higher levels of stress and negative emotions such as anxiety and depression have been reported since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it remains less clear how positive emotions, such as hedonic capacity, may be affected. Further, during lockdowns, the ability to learn new pleasurable activities (hedonic learning) may be particularly relevant. Here, we investigated if state hedonia and/or hedonic learning mediated the relationship between COVID-19 stress and mental health. Moreover, we explored whether positive appraisal style (PAS), a major resilience factor, influenced these relationships.

Methods: Using a cross-sectional design, 5000 German-speaking participants filled out online questionnaires targeting stressors, mental health, state hedonia, hedonic learning, and PAS between April 9 and May 15, 2020. After confirming the factor structure of our constructs, we applied latent structural equation modeling to test mediation as well as moderated mediation models.

Results: Stress showed a positive association with mental health symptoms, which was buffered by both state hedonia and hedonic learning. While higher stress was related to lower state hedonia, participants reported more hedonic learning with greater stressor load. The latter effect was greater for individuals with high PAS.

Limitations: The present results should be replicated in longitudinal designs with representative samples to confirm the directionality and generalizability of effects.

Conclusions: Both state hedonia and hedonic learning buffered the effect of stress on mental health in an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning new rewarding activities in combination with a PAS may be especially relevant for maintaining mental health during lockdowns.

Keywords: ACIPS, Anticipatory and Consummatory Interpersonal Pleasure Scale; AIC, Akaike Information Criterion; Anhedonia; BIC, Bayesian Information Criterion; CFA, confirmatory factor analysis; CFI, comparative fit index; CI, confidence interval; COVID-19; COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019; DARS, Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale; EFA, exploratory factor analysis; GHQ-12, 12-item General Health Questionnaire; MLR, robust maximum likelihood; Mental health; PAS, positive appraisal style; Positive appraisal; RMSEA, root mean square error of approximation; Reward learning; SARS-CoV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; SEM, structural equation modeling; SRMR, standardized root mean square residual; Stress; TEPS, Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale; TLI, Tucker Lewis index; aBIC, sample-size adjusted BIC.