Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of many high school and college students, and recent studies indicate increased emotional distress in this age group. We examined associations among 10 pandemic-related concerns, 21 affects, and three self-regulatory skills using crosssectional online survey data from high school and college students in two regions of the United States (Study 1: N = 392 and Study 2: N = 1,200). Network models of regularized partial correlation networks revealed both equifinal and multifinal pathways between specific COVID-19 concerns and positive and negative affects. In both studies, concern about conflict with parents was the pandemic-related concern most strongly connected to negative affects, mindfulness was most strongly connected to pandemic-related concerns and negative affects, and selfcompassion was most strongly connected to positive affects.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 727-742 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | American Psychologist |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The Character Lab Research Network played a supporting role in data collection, and we thank them for supporting and assisting with this research
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association
Keywords
- Covid-19 pandemic
- Mindfulness
- Network analysis
- Parent conflict
- Self-compassion
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article