The protective role of positivity and emotional self-efficacy beliefs in times of the COVID-19 pandemic

The impact of positivity and self-efcacy beliefs in managing anger, fear, and sadness on positive and negative afect was examined at three time points over 9 months. Data from 1,401 students (73.4% women) attending an online University in Spain were collected before the beginning and during the frst wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of a random intercept cross-lagged panel model revealed that the strongest relationships in terms of efect size occurred at the trait level, in which participants who had a general higher positivity over time were also those who reported, in general, higher selfefcacy, higher positive afect, and lower negative afect than their counterparts. At the within-person level, while controlling for stable (trait-like) individual diferences, higher than usual levels (state-like) of positivity in January 2020 predicted higher than usual levels of emotional self-efcacy beliefs and lower than usual levels of negative afect in June 2020. During the same transition, higher than usual levels of negative afect in January 2020 predicted lower than usual levels of emotional self-efcacy in June 2020. Moreover, higher than usual levels of self-efcacy in June 2020 predicted higher than usual levels of positivity in September 2020. We did not fnd any predictive efect for positive afect. The results pointed to the protective role of both positivity and regulatory emotional self-efcacy beliefs mostly against negative afect, corroborating previous fndings suggesting a virtuous circle of reciprocal infuence between positivity and regulatory emotional self-efcacy. The practical implications of these fndings are discussed.