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Disentangling Emotions during the Coronavirus Outbreak in Spain: Inner Emotions, Descriptive Feeling Rules and Socioemotional Conventions
- Amparo Caballero, Sergio Villar, Itziar Fernández, Verónica Sevillano, Pablo Gavilán, Pilar Carrera
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- Journal:
- The Spanish Journal of Psychology / Volume 25 / 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 March 2022, e12
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- Article
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For constructionism, language is the link among different levels of analysis of emotional events, from individual to interpersonal and macrosocial. The interaction among these emotional levels allows us to construe an emotional episode and label it with an emotion word, coordinate with the emotions perceived in others, and represent events as a society. Across two studies, we found similarities and differences among inner emotions experienced (individual level), emotions perceived in others (descriptive feeling rules, interpersonal level) and emotions shared on the internet (socioemotional conventions, macrosocial level), with all these emotional targets focused on the COVID–19 outbreak. The results indicate a similarity between the emotional meaning of COVID–19 in society and the descriptive feeling rules, whereas the reported inner emotions were clearly distinct: Joy was irrelevant at the interpersonal and macrosocial levels but clearly important at the individual level. A mismatch also appeared for fear and hope. While fear was the most predominant emotion at the interpersonal and macrosocial levels during most of the phases, it was moderately predominant at the individual level. Hope followed the opposite pattern, being the most relevant emotion at the individual level but less relevant at the interpersonal and macrosocial levels. Each level might have different consequences: Mixed emotions at the individual level might promote resilience; fear perceived in other people might motivate protective behaviors; and sadness socially shared during Christmas might generate greater empathy. These results support the complexity of emotional concepts and the suitability of exploring them at different levels of analysis.
5 - The crisis in Spain: origins and developments
- from Part I - The experience of the crisis
- Edited by Miroslav Beblavý, Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Slovakia, David Cobham, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, L'udovít Ódor
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- Book:
- The Euro Area and the Financial Crisis
- Published online:
- 07 October 2011
- Print publication:
- 06 October 2011, pp 81-96
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
The impact of the crisis on the Spanish economy, although qualitatively similar to that in other countries, shows some important quantitative differences. First, the cumulative decline in GDP (−4.5 per cent) has not been as large. Secondly, the banking sector started the crisis with more solid portfolios, as Spanish banks were kept away from the ‘toxic assets’ that initiated the first phase of the crisis, and has not imposed too much stress on public finances. Thirdly, despite the mild decrease in GDP, cumulative employment losses (−9.4 per cent) and the increase of unemployment (almost 12 percentage points) have been extremely high, due to some peculiarities of the Spanish labour market. Finally, after a decade of fiscal consolidation in which there was a long period of running fiscal surpluses and the debt-to-GDP ratio was brought below 40 per cent, there has been a severe deterioration in the fiscal position, with a deficit of 11.1 per cent in 2009. Despite the low debt-to-GDP ratio and the government commitment to restore fiscal soundness by 2013, Spain was temporarily among the ‘collateral victims’ of the Greek debt crisis. While the problems of the banking system seem currently under control, Spain faces the policy dilemma of restoring competitiveness and growth within a monetary union -- that is, without control of the exchange rate and interest rates -- at the same time as running down the volume of private debt accumulated before the crisis and that of public debt which increased sharply in response to the effects of the crisis.
Understanding this sequence of events and the policy options to restore growth requires revisiting the driving factors of the long expansion during the pre-crisis period and the impact of alternative policies. The pre-crisis expansionary phase was mostly driven by two factors: (1) a significant expansion of credit, which was induced by the fall in interest rates that followed Spain's entry into the European Monetary Union (EMU) and, more broadly, by a pervasive relaxation in the conditions of access to credit, and (2) the large immigration inflows into Spain over the period that substantially modified the demographic structure of the Spanish population.