Psychodynamic and sociopolitical predictors of COVID Distress and Gravity

This study examined the relationship between attachment style and fear of contamination during the COVID-19 pandemic, hypothesizing that anxiously attached participants would be more distressed when their safe space was threatened by someone leaving and returning. During May 2020, n = 355 participants provided demographics, personality, health anxiety scores, attachment styles, political ideology, and attitudes towards the pandemic. In both social media and MTurk subsamples (but not in a subsample from a ListServ of professional psychologists), anxious attachment was a significant predictor of distress above and beyond personality and health anxiety. In addition, political ideology emerged as a consistent predictor of perceptions of the seriousness of COVID-19, even holding the other predictors constant. Understanding an individual's attachment style may be helpful in working with them in their trauma. This research also contributes to early empirical evidence for the impact of political ideology on self-reported attitudes and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.