Open AccessAn Online Assessment to Evaluate the Role of Cognitive Biases and Emotion Regulation Strategies for Mental Health During the COVID-19 Lockdown of 2020: Structural Equation Modeling Study
Author(s) -
Iván Blanco,
Teresa Boemo,
Álvaro Sánchez-López
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
jmir mental health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2368-7959
DOI - 10.2196/30961
Subject(s) - rumination , psychology , stressor , anxiety , cognitive reappraisal , cognition , psychological resilience , clinical psychology , mental health , structural equation modeling , cognitive bias , expressive suppression , social psychology , psychotherapist , psychiatry , statistics , mathematics
Background Extant research supports causal roles of cognitive biases in stress regulation under experimental conditions. However, their contribution to psychological adjustment in the face of ecological major stressors has been largely unstudied. Objective We developed a novel online method for the ecological examination of attention and interpretation biases during major stress (ie, the COVID-19 lockdown in March/April 2020) and tested their relations with the use of emotion regulation strategies (ie, reappraisal and rumination) to account for individual differences in psychological adjustment to major COVID-19–related stressors (ie, low depression and anxiety, and high well-being and resilience). Methods Participants completed an online protocol evaluating the psychological impact of COVID-19–related stressors and the use of emotion regulation strategies in response to them, during the initial weeks of the lockdown of March/April 2020. They also completed a new online cognitive task designed to remotely assess attention and interpretation biases for negative information. The psychometric properties of the online cognitive bias assessments were very good, supporting their feasibility for ecological evaluation. Results Structural equation models showed that negative interpretation bias was a direct predictor of worst psychological adjustment (higher depression and anxiety, and lower well-being and resilience; χ 2 9 =7.57; root mean square error of approximation=0.000). Further, rumination mediated the influence of interpretation bias in anxiety ( P =.045; 95% CI 0.03-3.25) and resilience ( P =.001; 95% CI −6.34 to −1.65), whereas reappraisal acted as a mediator of the influence of both attention ( P =.047; 95% CI −38.71 to −0.16) and interpretation biases ( P =.04; 95% CI −5.25 to −0.12) in well-being. Conclusions This research highlights the relevance of individual processes of attention and interpretation during periods of adversity and identifies modifiable protective factors that can be targeted through online interventions.