Language:
English
Pages:
1 Online-Ressource (18 Seiten)
Publ. der Quelle:
New York, NY : De Gruyter Mouton
Angaben zur Quelle:
10,1, Seiten 171-188
DDC:
300
Keywords:
counterfactual conditionals
;
emotion
;
perspective
;
sentence completion
;
COVID-19
;
Sozialwissenschaften
Abstract:
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic turned into a global crisis. Focusing on the deterioration in people’s mental health, we conducted two experiments, one in Germany and one in the UK, in January and February 2021, when both countries were in lockdown. Using a COVID-19-themed sentence completion task, we tested the direction of counterfactual thoughts in relation to egocentric (self-focused) versus non-egocentric (other-focused) perspective-taking. Results show that in both samples, more upward counterfactuals (mental simulation of better counterfactual worlds, relating to negative emotions) than downward counterfactuals (mental simulation of worse counterfactual worlds, relating to positive emotions) were produced in the egocentric condition. An opposite pattern was found in the non-egocentric condition. We conclude that emotions as expressed in counterfactual language are perspective-dependent.
Abstract:
Peer Reviewed
DOI:
10.1515/lingvan-2022-0139
URN:
urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-110-18452/31838-0
URL:
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