Sympathy towards people infected with COVID-19 mediates relations between media use and death anxiety

Miao Chao; Jie Liu; Dini Xue; Bin Zhang; Brian J Hall

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1570747

Sympathy towards people infected with COVID-19 mediates relations between media use and death anxiety

Front Psychiatry. 2025 Apr 8:16:1570747. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1570747. eCollection 2025.

Authors

Miao Chao^{1

2

3}, Jie Liu^{1

2}, Dini Xue^{1

2}, Bin Zhang^{1

2

3}, Brian J Hall⁴

Affiliations

¹ Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
² Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
³ Tianjin Key Laboratory of Student Mental Health and Intelligence Assessment, Tianjin, China.
⁴ School of Global Public Health, New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic threatened mental health. This study examined the longitudinal associations among pandemic-related media use, sympathy for people infected with COVID-19 (PIWC), and death anxiety. 132 Chinese adults completed measures three times, one week apart during the initial phase of COVID. The results showed that media use, sympathy, and death anxiety decreased significantly over the first month of the outbreak. Pandemic-related media use predicted increased future sympathy for PIWC, and sympathy predicted increased future death anxiety. The study identified the short-term effects of media use on sympathy and death anxiety, and suggests that reduced media exposure may be beneficial.

Keywords: COVID-19; death anxiety; longitudinal; media use; sympathy.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Tianjin Philosophy and Social Science Project TJJXQN20-003.