Pathogen Prevalence, Collectivism and Online Sadness Expression in China *: for Special Track “Covid-19 and Computational Social Psychology”

Online collective emotions have regional distribution differences on the macro-level, and it is closely related to the actual offline collective behavior. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the underlying factors. Studies have shown that individualism-collectivism significantly affects the spatial distribution of collective emotions, and it also is affected by social and ecological factors such as pathogen prevalence. Based on this, we hypothesized that the pathogen prevalence affects collective happiness and sadness by collectivism. Using public archival data, existing regional collectivism index, and emotional expression data in Chinese micro-blog Weibo, we examine the impact of pathogen prevalence on the expression of happiness and sadness at the province-level in China. The results showed that the pathogen prevalence positively predicted the expression of sadness, and collectivism mediated this influence. However, we didn't find that the pathogen prevalence suppressed the expression of happiness through collectivism. Finally, we discussed how the findings shed light on research concerning online emotional expression and possible future directions.