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COVID-19 Pandemic and Emotional Contagion: Societies facing Collapse

Simone Belli, Complutense University of Madrid, [email protected]

Claudia Valeria Alonso, Autonomous University of Madrid, [email protected]

Abstract: This study will seek answers to three research questions, directed to evaluate the patterns and the structure of pandemics and contagious in different ages and territories, always taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic: What kind of patterns and emotional contagion are shared in different pandemic moments across ages and countries? How a pandemic our daily lives? Which type of will dominate and why in the emotional contagion caused by a pandemic situation? To answer these research questions, our is based on a mapping of epistemological knowledge from social science and history about how societies faced collapse due to epidemic outbreaks. Also, we present an autoethnography to revise moment by moment how professional and private lives are being affected by this pandemic right now.

Keywords: coronavirus, Covid-19, emotional contagion, collapse, pandemic

Introduction

In January 2020, a new type of virus of the Coronaviridae family, currently called COVID-19, was identified as the cause of an outbreak, with tens of thousands of cases with relevant associated mortality, in Wuhan, the capital of the Hubei Province in China (Xie et al. 2020). It was later declared a Public Health Emergency. As stated by the World Health Organization on March 11, the outbreak of COVID-19 turned into a pandemic. The spread of the disease was becoming unstoppable and had already reached the necessary epidemiological criteria for being called pandemic as having infected more than 1.400.000 people in 195 countries1. Still, nowadays, COVID-19 pandemic is creating a global health

1 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ 08/04/2020 emergency. The defiance is hard, and many measures have been implemented to avoid social collapse.

The pandemic is changing social life across the world at a very rapid rate. As there is not a vaccine ready yet, confinement is the only way to avoid getting infected. Governments around the world are dictating laws and imposing emergency state to guarantee it, imposing strict conditions upon the behaviors of those who live within their territories. Therefore, everyday habits and practices that up until now have been taken for granted are either being altered in multiple ways or just halted altogether. Simultaneously, new modes of sociality are being created in and through the new social situations constantly coming into existence. People are responding in multiple ways - involving and creativity - to live in the time of the pandemic. As some previous possibilities are closed down, new ones may now be opening up, perhaps with far-reaching but unpredictable effects.

This work introduces historical context and collapse study into social research. We need to develop further the study of interpersonal cognitive processes and emotions. This would follow naturally from taking up the idea that an important medium of cognition and memory is a conversation (Belli, Aceros, and Harré, 2016). If there are differences in the organization of the brains of those who live mainly in a psychological context from those of loners this may be only of passing since the key studies have already been situated in collective contexts. Over the centuries, we generate a sequence of “psychologies” that will need interpretation because ways of thinking, language, and other symbolic means will be ever-changing. We take this for granted in studies of – Latin is not the language of modern Christian thought but unless we understand it we will not be able to understand the great authors of the Middle Ages. Moreover, recent studies of the impact of Shakespeare’s plays in the sensitivity of the vastly different shows that taken- for-granted beliefs have led to very different readings of those psychologically profound works in time and space (Belli, Aceros, and Harré, 2016).

This study will seek answers to our research questions (RQ), directed to evaluate the patterns and the structure of pandemics and contagious in different ages and territories, always taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic:

RQ1: What kind of patterns and emotional contagion are shared in different pandemic moments across ages and countries? RQ2: How a pandemic affect our daily lives? RQ3: Which type of emotion will dominate and why in the emotional contagion caused by a pandemic situation?

To answer these research questions, our methodology is based on a mapping of epistemological knowledge from social science and history about how societies faced collapse due to epidemic outbreaks. Also, we present an autoethnography to revise moment by moment how professional and private lives are being affected by this pandemic right now.

We have decided to recollect in this paper data from our daily experience as isolated subjects in our homes but affected by emotions from other people that live outside our physical spaces. Many times, we connect with them thanks to digital media. For Latour (2004) the only condition to be affected is to have a body. This paper was written in total caused by the Coronavirus pandemic using digital tools to communicate between authors, and analyzing emotions and contagion from media and through media.

Different Ages, Similar Patterns

As Chiu et al. (2004) explain, infectious diseases have always been a threat to humans, especially when social conditions were continuously changing. Epidemics such as the bubonic plague, AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and now, coronavirus has seriously affected human beings.

Therefore, plagues have always been an integral part of human life and collective imagination. The biblical plagues of Egypt are paradigmatic but it is fundamental as well for one of the most important works of Western literature, the Iliad: the god Apollus sends a plague against the Achaeans besieging Troy because their leader, Agamemnon, has dishonored the priest Chryses kidnapping his daughter, Chryseis. To stop the plague, Agamemnon returns the captive but orders Achilles to give him, as a compensation, his favorite slave, Briseis. Refusing, the king takes the girl by force, causing Achilles’ (Il. II, 1.1-492), the trigger of the whole story.

Historical plagues have been numerous and hard along with our History. A plague, similar to the bubonic one that affected Europe during the Late Middle Age, has been claimed to be one of the causes of the collapse of the Mycenaeans kingdoms at the Late Bronze Age (Dickinson 2006; Knapp & Manning 2016). Although there is not material or textual evidence about it, it is well documented that a contemporary power, the Hittite empire, was heavily affected by endemic and periodic outbreaks. One of them even killed two emperors (Bryce 1998). Hittites even used infected animals to spread the illness, probably Turalameia or rabbit fever, towards their enemy lines (Trevisanato 2007). The Hittite Empire disappeared well at the Late Bronze Age as well, so epidemics have also been considered one the “vectors of collapse” (Wiener 2018). Although in these cases, illnesses could have been determinant for sociopolitical collapses, plagues were quite common, being part of daily life. Romans and Byzantines also had to face devastating plagues (Stathakopoulos 2004). The so-called “Black Death” killed almost 60 % of the European population in the 14th c. BC (Benedictow 2004). The Europeans brought their diseases to America, decimating the indigenous population, while the so-called Spanish flu in 1918 or the AIDS pandemic during the final decades of the last century is two more links in this historical but also social history (Aberth 2010).

One of the most famous ancient plagues took place in Athens in 430 BC. At that time, Athens was the hegemonic power of the Delian League, used by this polis as an imperial tool to dominate the Aegean. It is the time of the building of the Parthenon, of development of the sophistic and the tragedy. It is the Age of Pericles (Rhodes 2018). However, in 431 a.C., a war, that lasted almost 30 years, was declared between Sparta and Athens, followed by their allies (Pascual González & Domínguez Monedero 1999).

The first outbreak of the plague took place, then, during the second year of the war. All the Attic population was confined beyond the walls of the city as the Spartans invaded the region at the beginning of the summer. The illness was probably brought from Ethiopia to the Athenian port of Piraeus when it reached the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (Thu. 2. 48). The overpopulation of the city due to defensive needs was fatal. The plague was active during five years with different episodes, killing one-third of the Attic population, including the political leader Pericles in 429 BC, and subsuming Athens both in a material and moral ruin (Gutiérrez Giménez & Giménez Pardo 2018; Carreño Guerra 2019). The historian Thucydides, who himself suffered and recovered from the illness, did a detailed description of the development of the first episode of the epidemic (Thu. 2. 47-54). He explains that doctors and refugees were the main victims of the illness (2.48, 42). At the very beginning, physicians tried to help the victims, falling ill themselves, while the rest of the population performed rituals and elevated pleadings to the Gods to save themselves and the city. However, both medical aid and cult were useless (2.47). People began to die without control and in terrible .

Thucydides vividly described the terrible physical symptoms, which included ulcers, insomnia and internal fever (2.48-50). However, for the author, the moral and emotional consequences were worse. Without any and all that death around, with piles of deaths unburied filling the city, people began to act without any respect for the civil law and the Gods (2.53). As the Athenians thought that the end of their world was close and they could not envisage any future, they felt that it did not matter anymore how they behaved. They trusted doctors and Gods to stop the slaughter at the beginning. Thucydides highlights that the pandemic was especially hard with the people that took care of their ill relatives: they tried to help but, invariably, fell sick as well. This was the worst aspect of the plague and, for this reason, many people died alone (2.51). We must underline that the first episode of the plague coincided with the march of the Spartans along with the Attic territory. The proximity of the enemy army, almost at the city walls, only worsened this of proximity to the total collapse. The experience of something that has never happened before is present in another fact. Athenian deaths in battle were honored and commemorated, whereas the victims of the plague, their rests buried in a mass grave, were almost forgotten. The silence about the plague and the lack of memorials for these deaths did not allow the creation of an “Athenian collective memory” for this episode. This fact has been interpreted as the materialization of a collective trauma in which only the individual experience survived (Colclough 2019). What happened there is a typical case of emotional contagion when society faces collapse.

Emotional Contagion: theory and methodology

The complexity of the study of emotions comes from taking into account own personal experience as a rich source of data (Belli and Broncano, 2017). We agree with Harré (2000) that language is the main instrument through which such creations and modifications come to be. The experiences of our lives are fundamentally perspectival, and they can deeply distort , truth, objectivity, and our ideas of what it is to be a person (Goldie 2012).

Emotional contagion can occur at more conscious levels, including social comparison processes in which people evaluate their emotions in comparison to others and respond with what seems appropriate in the setting (Adelmann & Zajonc,1989; Barsade, 2002, 2018; Schachter, 1959; Sullins, 1991). Moreover, people can intentionally influence others with their own emotions, engaging in “affective ” (Kelly & Barsade, 2001). Therefore, emotions have a robust influence on organizationally relevant perceptions and judgments (Barsade & Gibson, 2007).

The transfer of emotions via emotional contagion impacts personal perceptions. Parkinson and Simons (2012) found that and excitement of people to whom the subjects of their study were close significantly influence their focal perceptions of the riskiness of decisions. The importance, e.g., of staying at home to fight the pandemic situation is perceived differently by the citizens in time. Firstly, it was thought of as an exaggeration, and later like a responsibility. Some people, from their windows and balconies, act as a kind of watch-even insulting passengers, which most of the time are health workers or parents with ASD children.

In this pandemic situation, emotional contagion can impact broader outcomes such as political decisions in different stages. Erisen, Lodge, and Taber (2014) tested and found evidence of emotional contagion influencing individuals’ policy evaluations and subsequent political decisions. Their theory of motivated political reasoning suggests that emotions caught in the early stages of informational processing have a significant influence on the evaluation and subsequent support or rejection of political policies. Specifically, the emotion that was passed on to the evaluators of policies led them to make emotion-congruent evaluations and decisions. Given the current political landscape, future studies must obtain a better understanding of the effective drivers of decision-making concerning public policy (Barsade et al. 2018).

Scientists have found that individuals generally respond differently to positive and negative emotional stimuli (Barsade et al. 2018). Negative events like a pandemic are thought to generate quicker and more powerful emotional, behavioral, and cognitive responses than neutral or positive events (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1997; Rozin & Royzman, 2001). This is observed, e.g., in the Athenian epidemic. In accordance with motivated cognitive processing theory (Clark & Isen, 1982), which proposes that people may be motivated to stay in a positive affective state, there may be situations in which people instinctively focus more on positive emotions avoiding the void negative ones.

Kramer et al. (2014) argue that emotions can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. Social media and social networks, digital platforms that facilitate sharing, user-created content, and collaboration among people (Elefant, 2011; McFarland & Ployhart, 2015), are especially significant in this context. As key conversations and tasks are increasingly carried out virtually, scholars have begun to explore whether emotional contagion can occur without physical co-location (in many instances, through only text-based interaction) (Barsade et al. 2018). While research in this domain is still relatively nascent, extant work suggests that emotions can spread virtually, both among teams and, more broadly, across entire social networking platforms (Cheshin et al., 2011; Del Vicario et al., 2016; Ferrara & Yang, 2015; Kramer et al., 2014). Another societal phenomenon that is likely influenced by emotional contagion is the tendency for individuals to expose themselves to information that reinforces their existing views, which contributes to an apparent “echo chamber” within the press and social media (Barbera, Jost, Nagler, Tucker & Bonneau, 2015; Garrett, 2009). This is because the emotions expressed on these platforms likely lead to increased partisanship and division, as different groups are bombarded with often vastly different sets of emotions about the same event (Barsade et al. 2018). For this reason, emotional contagion increases division, due to the different of, e.g., collective rage, or relief shared among the different sub-groups (and media echo chambers) to which the person belongs. Studies have focused on the social transmission of emotions and behavior across large societal social networks (Bastiampillai, Allison, & Chan, 2013). This study illustrated how negative emotions spread through intimate contacts with friends and families, a dynamic process that leads to the clustering of people in positive and negative emotions in groups within networks (Fowler & Christakis, 2008). Social media connects the emotions of the users and influence them (Saldias and Picard, 2019).

For Remuzzi and Remuzzi (2020), the system’s capacity to respond to changing circumstances has been under enormous pressure. In this scenario of a new pandemic, doctors and nurses are modern heroes in an unexpected war against a difficult enemy (Remuzzi and Remuzzi, 2020). In European countries, rather than revising the Schengen visa-free zone, the most effective way to contain this viral outbreak, Remuzzi and Remuzzi (2020) explain, is to avoid the close contact at the individual level and social meetings in each country. In other words, confinement. For this, while we are writing this paper, we are confined to Madrid and Bergamo in our houses for several days. In the labor sphere, the political decisions were to suspend the activities in the workplace, replacing them with private spaces, our own homes. Smart working and digital activities are key to continue to develop our work. All levels of the educational system follow the same rules, so young people continue to learn from their homes. Physical proximity is a medical issue in a pandemic situation but also an emotional one. of the other persons is also a product of these political decisions. Emotional contagion, in this case, consist in avoiding any kind of social context with the rest of the people around us. In this new context, social resilience appears as a new form to resist.

From the focus of the last pandemic: The case of Madrid (Spain) and Bergamo (Italy)

In the first weeks of the pandemic[1], European cities were the most affected by coronavirus. Firstly, Lombardia, in the north of Italy, with the city of Bergamo as the core of contagious, followed by, Madrid, the capital city of Spain. As we are two academics that have families in the respective cities, we have observed how similar patterns have emerged in several moments of the pandemics. The emotional contagious between citizens of these two cities have moved following these emotional patterns. In the beginning, we felt indifference (“the virus is something that not affect my life”) and about what happened in the far Wuhan. We even made jokes and . Media often compared the illness with influenza, attenuating the feeling that we were dealing with something unknown and highly dangerous. Our general perception changed when the first cases outbroke in Bergamo and Madrid. Similar cultural context and geographical proximity have favored the awareness that something urgent and dangerous has arrived in our cities. This is the start of the emotional contagion, as it implies that interacting people tend to learn from each other about existing behavior possibilities (Mark, 1988), like to be infected by a virus. The emotional contagion also implies to make similar choices or conforming to the group (Cohen, 1978). And, of course, the possibility to replicate each other’s choices, like to decide to work from home or to not go to dinner in that restaurant. Feelings moved to incomprehension and negation when the outbreak happened in our places and confinement began, completely changing our perception of the disease and our We felt for the first time that the collapse was almost here. Immediately after, the responsibility of self- and communal behavior, to stay at home), and in society, institutions, and professionals, especially Health system workers(the same city, country, EU, etc.). However, the most dominant feel is fear of falling ill ourselves or our relatives. Fear is transmitted in the media, on social networks and by our friends and relatives. The number of infected and deaths encourages this fear. Anxiety towards the economy, as millions of jobs have been destroyed, is very common too. A new communal feeling emerged during these days as well: the devastation provoked by the absence of mourning our deaths due to the pandemic. , mourning is the next emotional stage. This emotion may be for deceased people we know or not, but there this is a feeling that we can hardly express. We are isolated, trapped in our houses. We cannot communicate according to traditional channels (talking to our friends having coffee, for example). Grief is a narrative and social process. The society helps us to process it. But in this situation, people are alone. A beloved one gets sick, you call the ambulance and they take him/her to the hospital. These things get complicated and that person dies, alone. You question how that person died if he or she was alone if there was pain, everything. At no time have you been able to follow this process, as visits to hospitals are forbidden. The hospital calls you to take the body away. There is no funeral, There is, if lucky, private burial in the cemetery, with three attendants as maximum. Sometimes they transfer the body to another city for cremation with the army trucks, as is happening in Bergamo, Italy. And you are suspicious if the ashes they give you are yours or those of hundreds of other bodies that have cremated the same day. And you are at home, alone, isolated. Two days ago this person was there with you, and now no longer. This process is happening to people who live around us, every hour. Anxiety, , fear, and can be summed up in devastation. These feelings cannot leave individuals as they are confined. They are transmitted to the whole society towards media and social networks. In this case, for many people that are , feeling that other people share their loss is being healing, as it relieves the absence of a proper morning. Just a phone call from a relative and the opportunity of crying together, even in the distance, is proving to be emotionally beneficial. However, mourning is a process made up of different emotions and stages (Goldie, 2012). It is not just an emotion, they are many and complex. And we need the full support of society. Spain and Italy are losing many lives, an entire generation, and for this reason, the process must be social. This emotional process is longer than that of an economic crisis. We will have to work high a massive emotional recovering. You recover from an economic crisis, from a crisis of people, no. Then, emotions for the day after are highly important. Responsibility and trust in society will be fundamental. Now, this means staying at home. But we will leave this stage, living with more commitment and with another vision of society. In these days we are valuing well what is important and necessary, and what is not. We know now that there is a global problem and the only way to survive is for everyone to stay home. Let everyone take responsibility and stay at home. Trust institutions, politicians, and public health professionals again. A society infected with responsibility is the key to combat this contagion.

Discussion

There is an emotional contagion because people from different parts of the world are facing the same problem: a pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus. We also observe that emotions towards contagions are similar across ages and civilizations. The degree could depend on the development of public policies. However, pandemic history shows that, beyond individual loss, society prevails. This trust guides our emotions. Trust is not only needed to gain access to knowledge, but it is also essential to becoming a socially situated self. In our study is internalized through social practices like solidarity and cooperation. Without trust, the subject feels negative emotions (fear, , anxiety, and ) and loss perspective Although trust is fundamental to the construction of social ties, we still need to understand how they work or how to figure out their nuances and distinctions in contexts where collapse is felt close. Trust contributes to narrowing the horizons of the expectable so our social life becomes possible. The construction and maintenance of hope cause proactive emotional contagion.

In China, there is a social phenomenon called guanxi: “an intricate and pervasive relation network which Chinese cultivate energetically, subtly, and imaginatively” (Sennett 2012, 135). This means to trust in social relations and networks, and fellowship bonds. For instance, a Chinese person newly arrived in a foreign city feels free to call cousins and friends to help him looking for a job and somewhere to sleep. This informal cohesion is composed of dialogic exchange, a negotiated process based on epistemic trust. To trust in others is not the main purpose of this guanxi relationship but to obtain information and knowledge to live in a new context. Responsibility emerges from a reciprocal understanding of a circumstance as a situation in which the person involved is answering to the emotional needs manifested by others (Belli and Broncano, 2017).

About RQ1, emotion patterns change along time. Firstly, indifference and curiosity. When the outbreak happens in our hometown, we experiment disbelief and negation. Suddenly, settles. Uncertainty as well, as we do now know what will happen when this will end and how this crisis will affect our life, e.g., with our jobs. Uncertainty also affects our personal relations. Although we are connected with friends and relatives, we do not know when we will meet again. In this context, one of the most powerful emotions, spread to the entire population, is the detained mourning. For many generations, it is the first time they feel that collapse is close. However, we do not suffer the Athenian delirium. Precisely, historical examples prevent overcoming by panic. We suffer physical and psychological pain, but we know that society will prevail. There is a world to come back after. And if we want to do so, we have to protect ourselves and our beloved ones’ health. This is also an emotional contagion that protects us from personal collapse, which is also there as well. Trust as an emotion if fundamental, in us and also in institutions. As we have seen, this is especially relevant when speaking about Health system workers, which have become social heroes. Therefore, as a society, we are grazing collapse but collective positive emotions softened panic. Emotional contagion softens panic, especially when individuality loses value against the collective and public, which we know for sure that will survive.

About RQ2, with the COVID-19 pandemic, our daily life has disappeared. Especially significant is how our perception of time has been modified. The common experience of time has changed. Nowadays, it is dictated by governmental laws and data about the evolution of the illness. Emotions that we do not normally have emerges real fear for our friends and relatives and devastation due to the absence of mourning. Moreover, these exceptional situations unveil resilience attributes previously unknown to all of us. This is what we call “pandemic time”, a concept we will develop in further studies.

Finally, we have RQ3. Right now, it seems that we have just overtaken the pandemic peak, as the curve plateaus and begins to go slightly down. This stage matches our hard confinement, in which all activity not intended for basic production, is stopped. These are hopeful news in a complex emotional context where the explosive character nature of the pandemic and the consequences have exhausted. Scientific models, historical examples and contemporary Wuhan, which will reopen the 8th of April a day before these lines are written, show that between the middle and the end of May the situation will be controlled. A horizon begins to appear, not very far in time. We will evaluate how we emotionally answer to this final challenge.

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