Women’s Emotional Experience to Covid 19 Social Constraints Influenced By Loneliness Feelings, Optimism and Negative Expectations

Abstract

The aim of the online study is to explore the effect of feelings of loneliness, optimism and negative expectations on negative emotional experience during a pandemic. 290 women from 20 to 75 years of age were examined. Toolkit: (1) author's questionnaire consisting of four subscales: negative emotional experience related to welfare certainty , negative emotional experience related to health, negative emotional experience related to personal control over the situation and negative emotional experience related to family relationships (Koychev & Babakova, 2020); (2) an adapted version of the scale for social and emotional loneliness for adults (SELSA-S; DiTommaso et al., 2004) and (3) a scale for optimism and negative expectations (Velichkov & Radoslavova, 2005). Applying linear regression analysis it was found that the negative expectations have the strongest effect on the negative emotional experience related to welfare certainty (β = 0.256; p≤0.001). Health effects are influenced by social loneliness (β = 0.204; p = 0.004) in combination with negative expectations (β = 0.206; p = 0.001). The emotional experience connected with family relations is influenced by the feeling of emotional loneliness (β = 0.312; p = 0.001) combined with negative expectations (β = 0.133; p = 0.023). The female negative expectations reveal to be a good predictor for the negative emotional experience related to personal control over the situation (β = 0.232; p = 0.001). Тhe negative expectations combined with emotional loneliness impose higher influence on the personal control over the situation of women over 35 years(β = 0.607; p = 0.001).