"The studies really show the importance of anticipated emotions
and how they are tied to behavior," Dillard said. "We don't
have to necessarily experience something to be fearful of it, and that
anticipated fear or other negative emotions can be a good motivator of behavior."
The research involved two studies done during the height of the
pandemic in 2021 to either predict their emotions to a future COVID-19
infection or recall their emotions from having one. One group studied
was about 200 college students, the other about 400 general adults.
The results from both studies showed that those who were predicting
how they would feel if they were infected in the future anticipated
more negative emotions than those recalling how they felt around the
time of a past infection, Dillard said.
Researchers asked about four emotions, Dillard said: fear, guilt,
anger and regret. Of those emotions, anger or fear tended to be more
prominent in the research, she said.
Noting the timing of the research during the pandemic, anger was an
understandable emotion, Dillard said.
"At this point, people have hunkered down. They're saying, 'I
have done all this work to stay away from people, having to sacrifice
the things that I love to do in my life. I've done all the right
things and now I've gotten this,'" Dillard said.
Dillard said the negative emotions and worries about the severity of
getting the virus were higher among the general adults, indicating
that this group – which had an average age of mid-30s – tended to feel
more threatened than the college students.
This work is all part of Dillard's research emphasis on "impact
bias," which shows that people who think about potential future
events tend to overestimate their emotions, whether the event is
negative, like a potential illness, or positive, such as anticipating
how long one will be happy after reaching a milestone.
Studying impact bias when it comes to health, and particularly in how
it ties to behavior, is an area ripe for more research, Dillard said.
