Denny, Bryan TLeal, Stephanie L2022-09-232022-09-232022-052022-04-19May 2022Dicker, Eva Ellen. "Examining the role of psychological distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic." (2022) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/113340">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/113340</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/113340The COVID-19 pandemic has been profoundly taxing. Psychological distancing is an emotion regulation strategy where one takes an objective, distant perspective, and is uniquely suited to addressing COVID-19 stress. My first aim was to examine how emotion regulation strategy use is associated with pandemic-related stress across individual differences. Study 1 found that psychological distancing predicts lower overall COVID-19 stress. My second aim was to examine causality between psychological distancing and COVID-19 stress. Study 2, a remote emotion regulation training, showed no significant effects. My third and fourth aims were to examine how perceived vulnerability and emotion polyregulation may moderate emotion regulation success. Exploratory Analysis 1 found that fear of COVID-19 moderated the impact of emotion regulation on COVID-19 stress. Exploratory Analysis 2 found that multiple strategy use reduced the impact of psychological distancing on COVID-19 stress. The studies discussed here offer psychological distancing as a generalizable, adaptive tool during COVID-19.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.COVID-19emotion regulationcognitive reappraisalpsychological distancingstressThesis2022-09-23