The role of cognitive biases and emotion regulation strategies when facing major stressors: ecological evidence during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 using a novel online cognitive bias assessment (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Extant research supports a causal role of cognitive biases on 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 to provide an ecological examination of attention and interpretation biases during major stress (ie, the COVID-19 lockdown suffered 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-related stressors (ie, low depression and anxiety, high well-being and resilience). METHODS Participants completed an online protocol evaluating the psychological impact of COVID-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, lower well-being and resilience) [χ2 (gl) = 7.57 (9); RMSEA = .000]. Further, rumination mediated the influence of interpretation bias in anxiety and resilience (P = .045; P = .001, respectively), whereas reappraisal acted as a mediator of the influence of both attention and interpretation biases in well-being (P = .047; P = .041, respectively). 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.