Emotional Experiences of Vulnerable Groups During COVID-19

Introduction

The global COVID-19 pandemic introduced a level of stress and intense emotional experiences, reflected in personal relationships, workplace practices, and many aspects of our everyday lives. The overall multiple effects of this crisis are yet to be studied from both short-term and long-term perspectives. An analysis of the social psychological literature in this field identifies the stressors (or the sources of frustration) and the effective coping strategies (or buffers) that bring successful satisfaction of needs. The publications focus on aspects such as loneliness, social networks and connectedness, social (inter-)role conflicts, social identity, compliance challenges, trust and reactance, conspiracy beliefs, resilience, and well-being (for detailed systematic reviews, see Esposito et al., 2021; Rudert et al., 2021). Experiences at the individual level have been studied mainly regarding restrictive measures and are associated with increased loneliness (Buecker & Horstmann, 2021, p. 281). In their empirical investigation, the same authors conclude that “on average, the quality of social relationships was perceived worse during the pandemic than before.”

Another important topic concerns the consequences of the crisis on mental health. Wirkner and colleagues (Wirkner et al., 2021, p. 310) note that “increasing evidence supports the assumption of the pandemic being a multidimensional stressor on mental health, with some populations appearing more vulnerable than others, although inconsistencies arise.” A meta-analysis of the relationship between fear and depression, anxiety, and stress among the general population in the context of COVID-19 shows a high level of heterogeneity (Erbiçer et al., 2021). Gender has a significant effect on fear and anxiety relating to COVID-19 (especially for women), and the largest effect size of gender differences in COVID-related fear and anxiety is obtained from European studies (Metin et al., 2022).

Methods

To determine the specific experiences and sources of stress in the three particularly vulnerable groups, we conducted qualitative research in the Bulgarian sociocultural environment using the calendar interviewing method (Nacheva et al., 2023a, Appendix 1) to elicit recall of retrospective data and generate authentic narratives on personal experiences, dynamics of emotions and stress, dominant attitudes, and expectations.

Overall, we conducted 45 semistructured, in-depth calendar interviews (with 15 representatives of each vulnerable group) from October 2021 – January 2022 to generate authentic data on personal experiences during the pandemic. We conducted the interviews either in person or online via Zoom. Because of the COVID-19 restriction measures, some of the respondents were accessible only for online meetings. In both cases, we visualized and simultaneously filled in a calendar grid specially designed for the study. As a starting point for the timeline in our calendar, we set the beginning of 2020 (when COVID-19 was barely known to the public), and we completed the conversations with the respondents’ experiences until the time of being interviewed. The grid visualized all the “waves” of the infection, characterized by increased morbidity rates in Bulgaria and the implementation of specific measures by the responsible national authorities.

Nacheva et al. (2023a, Appendix 1) present both the content and structure of the interviews. The interviewers – social and organizational psychologists – were all members of the research project team. They had a 4-hour training on the method, a specially designed electronic platform in advance, and a real-time interview demonstration. The records of all interviews were uploaded to the electronic platform and were monitored by the other members of the team, so each interviewer received timely feedback on the quality of the work. Both the training and the procedure align with the recommendations and experience described by other social scientists in applying calendar interviews in their research (Glasner & van der Vaart, 2009; Glasner et al., 2012; Ongena et al., 2018).

The grid was visible to each interviewee either via Zoom screen-sharing on an electronic device (a laptop, a tablet, etc.) or via screen-sharing of the e-platform on the project website (www.cov19resilence.social). During the conversation, the interviewers filled in the grid with keywords for emotions and events outlined as important. The tool helped the participants to recall chronologically retrospective data and narratives on personal experiences, meanings, and explanations of the events in their lives throughout the pandemic. The recorded interviews were uploaded to an electronic platform for interviewing with calendars (connected to the website of the project).

We included eight life areas in the grid and during the interviews: changes in place of residence, work regime, family/household life, health practices, education/qualification, sports and hobbies, social life, and prevalent emotions. Participants shared their experiences and emotions about these areas during various stages of the pandemic (including lockdowns), focusing on the most important events for them in the respective stages.

Results

Based on C. Izard’s classification of emotions, we created a full dictionary of emotions in Bulgarian language and integrated it into WordStat to automatically extract content categories (word clouds) of emotional experiences during the COVID-19 crisis. The researchers agreed on each category’s semantic units (subcategories) in advance, including fear, interest, sadness, enjoyment, guilt, disgust, surprise, anger, shame, and contempt.

Regarding Carroll Izard’s classification of emotions (Izard, 1991, 1993), the content analysis results showed that the most prominent (i.e., frequently expressed) emotions were fear, interest, enjoyment, and sadness (Figure 1). In almost half of their responses, the interviewees associated COVID-19 with fear and experienced fear on different occasions because of the pandemic.

The frequencies of emotional categories showed relatively low prominence in the speech as long as guilt, disgust, anger, and surprise were concerned (Table 1). Categories such as shame and contempt were absent in the retrospective narratives of the respondents.

Table 1 Frequency and distribution of emotional categories

	Frequency	%
Fear	338	45.13%
Interest	122	16.29%
Sadness	94	12.55%
Joy	78	10.41%
Guilt	47	6.28%
Disgust	32	4.27%
Anger	29	3.87%
Surprise	9	1.20%

Table 1 Frequency and distribution of emotional categories

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Fear was the most frequently mentioned emotion in the group of working parents with little children. The parents were preoccupied with fear (anxiety) of their being infected with the coronavirus, whether themselves or their family members. Some parents worried about who would care for their children if they got ill or went into quarantine. Interest was the second most prominent emotion for the parents, related mostly to the news about the unprecedented pandemic conditions, the spread and mechanisms of the coronavirus, and the restrictive measures. Interest was followed by joy and sadness, which were equally represented for the group (36 cases each). Joy related mostly to the excitement some parents experienced about being together with all the family members for longer. The enjoyment of spending both quality and quantity time with significant others was actually somewhat prominent only for this group because of the opportunity to get closer to loved ones. At the core of sadness lay mostly the feeling of social isolation and sorrow felt for oneself and for other “victims” of the pandemic in the family, the community, and worldwide. Guilt was much less prominent than sadness and joy, while anger, surprise, and disgust were the least prominent emotions for the parents. A comparison of the emotional categories by vulnerable groups showed some interesting differences (see Figure 2 and Table 2). Overall, positive emotions were more prominent for the parents than in the other two groups.

Table 2 Frequencies of emotions in the three vulnerable groups

	Parents of little children	People with chronic illness	People who lost their job
Anger	2	15	12
Disgust	6	2	24
Fear	142	75	121
Guilt	18	11	18
Interest	54	31	37
Joy	36	14	28
Sadness	36	28	30
Surprise	3	1	5

Table 2 Frequencies of emotions in the three vulnerable groups

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Fear was also the most prominent emotion for people with chronic illness. Their fear was related to the lack of information about their treatment and the shortage of medicines. It is interesting to note that anger had the highest frequency in this group for the same reasons – the lack of information and the lack of access to healthcare services. Like the parents studied, interest was the second most frequently expressed emotion by the chronic sufferers, followed by sadness (for the same reasons). However, joy was almost twice as less prominent for them compared to sadness, while both surprise and disgust were almost absent. Overall, both fear and positive emotions were less prominent for the people with chronic conditions compared to the other two groups.

For the group of people who had lost their jobs, fear was also the prevailing emotion, followed by interest, sadness, and joy, which were much less frequently expressed than fear. This group’s positive emotions (interest and joy) came mostly from the opportunity to spend time with family, self-reflect, and rediscover hobbies and career paths. Again, surprise was the least prominent emotion. It is interesting to note that disgust was experienced more frequently by those who had lost their jobs compared to the other two vulnerable groups. The aversion came from the double disappointment – being deprived both socially and economically.

In summary, although we found fear to be the most frequently expressed emotion by chronically ill people, it was less prominent for them than the fear of working parents and people who had lost their jobs. The same applied to the positive emotions of interest and joy, especially the latter, which was also expressed less frequently by the respondents suffering from chronic diseases compared to the other two groups. Sadness proved to be almost as prominent as interest among chronic sufferers. However, unlike parents with little children, anger stood out as an emotional experience for people with chronic conditions, while surprise was almost absent in this group. People who had lost employment more or less repeated the emotional spectrum of the working parents, but the frequency of disgust and anger was higher for this group than in the former.

Discussion and Conclusions

The findings of this qualitative research showed that the prevalent emotions in the narratives of interviewees from the three vulnerable groups during the pandemic were negative. Fear was much more prominent compared to the other nine basic emotions in Izard’s classification. The trend in this dynamics shows that most respondents somehow adapted to the pandemic conditions by handling various strategies to cope with stress. Surprisingly, those who experienced fear the most at the initial stages of the crisis were the interviewed parents with little children rather than the chronically ill respondents. This finding suggests a specific resilience mechanism for the group of chronic sufferers, since some of them have already adapted to health crisis situations in their lives, and COVID-9 turned out to be just another crisis for them. Most individuals with chronic conditions were not so much scared as they were angry with the lack of a single source of information about the crisis and its consequences. The pandemic situation posed barely any surprises for this group. In contrast, the individuals who experienced more emotions from the positive range (joy and surprise) than others were the parents of little children. Perhaps, the children themselves or the chance of having the family gathered for a longer time resulted in their experiencing positive emotions along with negative ones. Regarding content, health-related concerns prevailed in the interviews. This finding was expected as long as the COVID-19 crisis was basically a health crisis that brought instability in other social and individual life domains. For all groups, the most frequent fears were related to fear of being infected with COVID-19, fear that other people (family, friends, colleagues) might be infected, and fears concerning the capacity of the healthcare system. Another common subtopic for all groups was vaccines, which seemed to reinforce the fears in various ways. These domains were often represented in the narratives concerning fears stemming from both threatening and unreliable media portraying the pandemic, crisis management, and prevention measures. A closer look at the details suggests that the lack of consistent and reliable information and the constant changes in the restrictive measures were significant sources of stress for the representatives of the vulnerable groups studied. In addition, the feeling of uncertainty and fear of the unknown – of what would come next – was also a source of stress for all groups. Perhaps, these findings are valid for other types of crises as well and can serve as a central line for elaborating specific measures and crisis communication targeting specific vulnerable groups in society.

Another important finding is that both the sources and the content of the fears were very different for the three groups included in the study. For parents with small children, the combination of work and family demands (the classical role conflict) with the perceived health threat and constant changes to the care regime of childcare institutions (e.g., distant learning, opening/closing schools and kindergartens, etc.) turned the situation to be more stressful than expected¹. The same is true of the topics of birth and pregnancy, which are stressful events per se. However, under pandemic conditions, the changes in medical practices additionally reinforced the respondents’ emotions, the perception of increased health threats, and, in some cases, the lack of treatment. These tendencies manifested in a large accumulation of narratives devoted to parents’ concerns; simultaneously, fears in this group seemed relatively consistent in their content: They repeatedly addressed the same topics. In conclusion, our findings reveal that working parents experienced intense fears during the health crisis situation, and that social and institutional support was needed – especially at the early stages of the pandemic – to help parents effectively cope with the stress.

Respondents diagnosed with chronical disease prior the COVID-19 crisis differed considerably, both in the quantity of the manifested fears and in the content. These findings led us to the conclusion that this group was not homogeneous – regarding both prevalent fears and their specific needs in the crisis situation. “Health” proved to be a central domain in the narratives, and special attention was paid to the changes in medical practices, the capacity of the healthcare system, and access to medical services, expertise, and information. Nevertheless, people with different diagnoses identified different sources of stress and demonstrated specific needs. These results imply that, regarding the health crisis, the general category of “chronically ill people” should be broken down into subcategories. The findings suggest that specific measures and policies for the subgroups might be more effective in case of crisis and that a key point should be providing clear and trustworthy information about clinical situations and medical practices. Social support seemed to have been of crucial importance for many representatives of this group, probably because of their restricted social life (stemming from requirements related to their clinical treatment). The mass media played a significant role in shaping their perceptions of the crisis, especially among those who either lived alone or were partially isolated because of their medical situation. The inconsistency in the media representations during the crisis situation and the presence of so-called “conspiracy theories” were additional sources of stress for the chronic sufferers.

As expected, the content of the fears of people who lost their jobs because of COVID-19 often related to the domains of work and economy. They referred to the lack of vision for the future and loss of control as important stressors. Therefore, both measures and communication appealing to security and future perspectives are needed for representatives of this group. At the same time, this group seemed to be very critical in its perceptions of the health threats and the crisis management/measures of the official authorities. They frequently expressed criticism, confusion, and mistrust in these interviews, suggesting that their fears were often mixed or ran parallel to other emotions (varying from interest and surprise to anger, disgust, sadness, and guilt). Therefore, economic measures have been critical for this group. Also, one should not underestimate emotional and psychological support for persons suffering from job loss in a crisis.