Emerging Adults' Financial and Emotional Distress, Emotion Regulation, and Prosocial Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Different Ages, Different Challenges: COVID-19-Related Distress and Coping

Abstract

Introduction. The financial and emotional stressors caused by COVID-19 have had numerous, wide-spread effects on people of all ages. However, for emerging adults, these stressors present unique obstacles to overcome. Within this developmental period, many college-bound individuals increase their social independence from family relationships, and work to contribute to college expenses or establish financial independence. With the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine disrupting education, suspending occupations, and forcing returns to the family home, as well as other stressors, emerging adults in university were particularly impacted. This could have undermined their ability to engage in normative, adaptive behaviors indicative of personal and social well-being, including prosocial behaviors intended to help others. Yet, there is abundant anecdotal evidence of prosociality during the pandemic. Individual differences in such capacities as emotion regulation may moderate the negative impacts of these stressors, and emerging adults who utilize such emotion regulation strategies as cognitive reappraisal engage in more prosocial behaviors.
This study aims to assess the impact of COVID-19 induced financial and emotional distress as predictors of both adaptive (i.e., public helping behaviors, support for others) and maladaptive behaviors (i.e., social withdrawal) in emerging adults. Two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, were explored as a potential buffer versus augmenter, respectively, of these associations.
Sample and Method. Online survey data were collected from 221 university-enrolled emerging adults (M age = 20.23, SD age = 1.92, 165 females) regarding the financial and emotional distress caused by COVID-19, their other-oriented prosocial and self-oriented withdrawal behaviors, and their emotion regulation strategies. Multiple forms of prosocial behaviors were assessed, including providing direct support to others, public displays of helping behavior, and pandemic-specific forms of helping (e.g., remaining indoors to keep others safe, purchasing resources on behalf of others), as well as withdrawal from opportunities to help others.
Results. Controlling for age, gender, educational level, and income, structural equation modeling demonstrated that emerging adults who experienced more emotional and financial stress also engaged in more support for others, public displays, and pandemic-specific forms of helping, as well as more withdrawal from helping others (Figure 1). Whereas expressive suppression negatively predicted support for others, cognitive reappraisal positively predicted support for others and pandemic-specific helping. Further, cognitive appraisal moderated several associations between pandemic-related stress and prosociality. It was only for emerging adults with greater cognitive appraisal that emotional and financial stress positively predicted public displays of helping others. Conversely, it was only for individuals who used less cognitive reappraisal that financial stress positively predicted withdrawal from helping.
Discussion. Emerging adults responded to pandemic-related financial and emotional distress in multiple ways, both engaging in prosocial behavior and withdrawing from opportunities to help others. Their tendencies to utilize adaptive emotion regulation skills partially shaped their likelihood to respond with socially connected and helpful, versus socially disconnected and isolating, behaviors. Thus, interventions to support emerging adults’ effective emotion regulation through cognitive reappraisal may prove effective for promoting adaptive responses to the pandemic that benefit others, as well as themselves.

Authors

• Ryan T Hodge, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• Lindsey Partington, University of California - Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Knapp, Claremont Graduate University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paul David Hastings, University of California - Davis
  Non-Presenting Author