ИСТИНА

The study aimed to compare how different social and demographic (i.e., non-psychological characteristics) affect people's perceptions of covid-19 and its pandemic, the experience of emotional stress, the picture of a disease that arises, and then changes in a certain way in a person's consciousness. To answer this question in the first wave of the April-May 2020 pandemic, we conducted a large-scale online study: the sample size was 1200 people living in different regions of Russia. We analyzed how different demographic characteristics (gender, age, region of residence, having a family, etc.), as well as the experience of various social difficulties associated with limited communication, loss of work, the need to adapt to new living conditions in isolation, affect the components of the collective picture of the disease: the feeling of the threat from the disease, feeling the possibility to control the disease, and fear of suspensible disease, psychological distress. Gender was a key determinant of differences. Levels of distress and threat were higher among women, men showed a higher level of control. It’s interesting to notice that having close relatives with COVID-19 increases levels of all four dependent variables but among men much higher than among women. Distress, treat and control decrease with age, only suspicion increases. Respondents with a very low income had the highest level of psychological distress, and increasing income till the average causes decreasing distress. But after the average point, the psychological distress does not depend on income more. It was shown that respondents’ losing the job increases distress but reduces concern about health problems. Threat from the pandemic they saw not through the threat to the health, but rather threat to their material wellbeing. It was shown that place of residence had no significant impact on dependent variables. [The study was funded by Grant RSСF 21-18-00624.]