后疫情时代：复工阶段不同阶层的社会情绪及压力因素

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened individuals’ health and exerted a great impact on national economic development and personal income. During major public emergencies, people’s social emotions and mentality changed as the pandemic progressed. However, the pandemic would not affect all social members in a similar way. Previous research has demonstrated that social class has a profound influence on individuals’ social cognition, emotion, and behavior. Facing the pandemic, people from lower social class are less likely to access public and personal resources, which may lead to more psychological distress. Since mid-February, China has rolled out active precaution measures while resuming production and work gradually and safely. During this period of post-pandemic, people of lower social class status may confront a higher risk of unemployment and thus lead to higher economic stress and more negative affect. The present study aims to investigate how people from different social classes might perceive and respond to stress during work resumption and to explore how their social emotions and perceived stress change over time. We conducted online surveys among Shanghai citizens at three time points approximately one week apart, with 1073 adults participating in the first survey (T1), 983 adults participating in the second survey (T2), and 1078 adults participating in the third survey (T3). Since Chi-square test and One-Way ANOVA showed that there were significant differences in demographic variables among the three samples, we added the control variables (i.e., gender and age) in the following analyses. We measured social class and social emotions at all three time points. Besides, we measured perceived stress (i.e., safety-related stress and economic stress) and the desire to go back to work at T2 and T3. All the measures showed good reliabilities and validities in the current study. The results indicated that: (1) Participants experienced higher levels of positive affect than negative affect at all three time points during work resumption. Also, participants’ emotions became more and more positive over time, manifested by increased positive affect and reduced negative affect. (2) Social class was significantly related to positive and negative affect, indicating that lower-class people were less positive and more negative than their higher-class counterparts. The interaction between measuring time and social class was not significant. (3) Participants perceived less safety-related stress over time, while experienced almost the same level of economic stress. Besides, social class was positively related to safety-related stress, while negatively related to economic stress, indicating that low-social class individual was more likely to suffer from economic stress, while high-social class individual experienced more safety-related stress. There was no significant interaction between measuring time and social class on either safe-related stress or economic stress. (4) We found that people in the lower social class had a stronger desire to get back to work. (5) Safety-related stress significantly mediated between social class and positive / negative affect, respectively, while economic stress only significantly mediated between social class and negative affect. The current study has found significant differences in social emotions and perceived stress between different social classes. People in the lower social class are more negative and perceive higher economic stress, while the higher social class population is more anxious about safety. These findings have a compelling implication on implementing targeted policies that help the lower social class population to cope with, resist, and recover economically from the major public emergencies and regain their positive emotions and happiness.