Mixed and blended emotional reactions to 2014 Ebola outbreak

Zhuang, Jie

Publication

Mixed and blended emotional reactions to 2014 Ebola outbreak

Zhuang, Jie

Publisher

Edinburgh University Global Health Society

Date

2020-03-20

Abstract

How individuals emotionally respond to an epidemic has significant impact on their subsequent behavioral responses, ranging from complete ignorance to active engagement in suggested protection behaviors. When facing with health threats, people experience strong emotional feelings and a series of emotional swifts, from initial fear of the deadliness of disease and anxiety about one�s possible exposure to the disease, to anger at health systems and governments for their incapability of providing necessary protection, and at particular individuals for transmitting the disease. Sorrow and sadness are also commonly experienced for loss of lives. Researchers have increasingly begin to examine how people emotionally respond to health threats. For example, by analyzing a large number of online texts in response to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, researchers found a wide spread of negative emotional expressions (ie, anxiety and fear). Researchers found a low collective level of anxiety and a higher level of worry toward 2009 Influenza A pandemic in Hong Kong. Emotions are transient and dynamic, that is, people tend to feel a shift from one emotion to another over the course of an emotionally charging stimulus. In the case of 2014 Ebola, people were likely to experience fear due to the deadly consequences of Ebola at its onset in Africa. When mortality rates plateaued and started to decline, quarantined Ebola suspect cases were declared Ebola free and discharged from hospitals, and survival cases appeared, positive emotional responses began to emerge and intertwine with negative emotional responses. Individuals� arousal of positive and negative emotions may also be influenced by the spatial distance resulted from moving stimuli influenced. In the context of health threats, it is logical to aruge that when people are physically close to a health threat, their feeling of fear is more frequent and stronger in comparison to people who are physically distant.