Fatalism and Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Conditional Effects of Loneliness

The COVID-19 global crisis has put in danger more than our physical health. With containment measures people became more isolated, reducing drastically their daily social interactions. Many studies have already documented the negative impacts of these measures, highlighting fatalism. However, studies that linked the effect of this negative impact to well-being indicators are still limited. In this sense, the aim of this study is to explore the relationship between fatalism associated with COVID-19 and well-being indicators, as well as the moderating role of loneliness in this relationship. Data were collected from 1,036 adults living in Peru through an online survey that includes the Quality-of-life index, the Fatalism facing COVID-19 scale, the Loneliness Scale and the Scale for Mood Assessment. Three models were tested using linear regression and ordinary least squares with bias-corrected bootstrapping. The results confirm that fatalism has a negative effect on quality of life and a positive effect on negative affect, and that loneliness mediates both relationships, supporting the increase of fatalism the effect over well-being indicators and negative affect.