COVID-19 Outbreak Enhances Making Meaning in Negative Experiences: Evidence from China

The present research investigated whether the outbreak of COVID-19 would increase Chinese participants’ tendency of seeing meaning in negative experiences (MINE). A longitudinal study (Study 1, N = 2535) showed that Chinese college students reported higher tendency of MINE during the outbreak of COVID-19 than three months before the outbreak. A cross-sectional study (Study 2) investigated a large student sample (N = 16096) and a large non-student sample (N = 11446) during the outbreak of COVID-19 in China and consistently showed that participants who were encountering high disease threat reported stronger perceived threat as well as greater tendency of MINE than those who were encountering low disease theat. Furthermore, the heightened perception of threat accounted for the heightened tendency of MINE. These results suggest that the COVID-19 outbreak makes Chinese more likely to see meaning in negative experiences, which may provide benefits for coping.