Anyone but Me: Unrealistic Optimism, Emotions and Anxiety in the Face of COVID-19 Pandemic.

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic (and its consequences, such as lockdown and public health regimes) was a novel and stressful situation for most of people, and, as such, it significantly affected both cognitive and emotional functioning of individuals. In our study, we explored unrealistic optimism bias (the cognitive error giving people a feeling of invulnerability) and any declared preventive behaviours undertaken in order to minimise the risk of contagion. We also measured twelve specific emotions (differing in valence and origin) and the feeling of the anxiety caused by the coronavirus.

Origin of Emotion Effects on ERP Correlates of Emotional Word Processing: The Emotion Duality Approach.

We distinguish two evaluative systems which evoke automatic and reflective emotions. Automatic emotions are direct reactions to stimuli whereas reflective emotions are always based on verbalized (and often abstract) criteria of evaluation. We conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study in which 25 women were required to read and respond to emotional words which engaged either the automatic or reflective system.