Journal article
Internet memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential coping mechanism for anxiety
- Abstract:
- This study examined whether significantly anxious individuals differed from non-anxious individuals in their perceptual ratings of internet memes related to the Covid-19 pandemic, whilst considering the mediating role of emotion regulation. Eighty individuals presenting clinically significant anxiety symptoms (indicating ≥ 15 on the GAD-7) and 80 non-anxious controls (indicating ≤ 4) rated the emotional valance, humour, relatability, shareability, and offensiveness of 45 Covid-19 internet memes. A measure of emotion regulation difficulties was also completed. The perception of humour, relatability, and shareability were all greater amongst anxious individuals relative to non-anxious controls. These differences were not mediated by emotion regulation deficits. Internet memes related to the current Covid-19 pandemic may tentatively serve as coping mechanism for individuals experiencing severe symptoms of anxiety.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.1MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41598-021-00857-8
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Scientific Reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 11
- Article number:
- 22305
- Publication date:
- 2021-11-12
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-09-20
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2045-2322
- ISSN:
-
2045-2322
- Pmid:
-
34772957
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1287436
- Local pid:
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pubs:1287436
- Deposit date:
-
2022-11-15
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Akram et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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