The year 2020 has been marked, in most regions of the world, by the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying devastating effects on the economy and on individuals' physical and mental health. Further studies should assess the long-term impact of such events as typical everyday life is restored. These findings point to rapid and compelling psychological and social consequences of the lockdown measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic on the perception of social groups. The same factor was inversely related to the perceived physical distance between individuals in images of small and large groups, suggesting an impact of lockdown measures and contagion-related worries on the representation of interpersonal space. Higher scores on this factor were associated with more positive ratings of images of individuals alone and in small groups, suggesting an increased appreciation of safer social situations, such as intimate and small-group contacts. These ratings of valence were, however, moderated by a factor that included participants' number of days in isolation, relationship closeness, and perceived COVID-19 threat. As expected, only images depicting large gatherings of people were rated less positively during, compared to before, the pandemic. All images were rated as more arousing compared to the pre-pandemic period, and the greater the decrease in real-life physical interactions reported by participants, the higher the ratings of arousal. Several self-report measures were also taken, and condensed into four factors through factor analysis. Pre-pandemic normative ratings were obtained from a validated database (OASIS). Images depicting individuals alone, in small groups (up to four people), and in large groups (more than seven people) were rated in terms of valence, arousal, and perceived physical distance. We investigated whether the combination of these events had changed people's appraisal of social scenes by testing 241 participants recruited mainly in Italy, Austria, and Germany in an online, preregistered study conducted about 50 days after the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe. Even people not directly affected by the virus itself were impacted in their physical and/or mental health, as well as in their financial security, by governmental lockdown measures.
In most European countries, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (spring 2020) led to the imposition of physical distancing rules, resulting in a drastic and sudden reduction of real-life social interactions. 4Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
3Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.2Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW), Amsterdam, Netherlands.1Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Claudia Massaccesi 1 *, Emilio Chiappini 1, Riccardo Paracampo 2 and Sebastian Korb 3,4