When humans are confronted with an epidemic situation or a continuous natural disaster, success depends largely on how critical information is conveyed to as many people as possible, how individuals' emotional experiences of the crisis are elicited, and how their behaviors are directed going forward. Efficient publicity is key to successful epidemic prevention and control. This study explores the role of creative publicity by comparing the influence of creative publicity and general publicity in different periods of the COVID-19 outbreak in (...) China. The effects of creative and general publicity differed across varying periods of the COVID-19 outbreak. Specifically, compared to general publicity, creative publicity had a significant impact on individuals' emotional arousal in the early period of the COVID-19 outbreak while it significantly promoted individuals' emotional arousal, behavioral regulation, and willingness to actively disseminate information in the middle period. In the stable period of the COVID-19 outbreak, creative publicity performed better than general publicity in regulating individuals' behavior. On the other hand, general publicity was more effective than creative publicity in regulating individuals' behavior and actively disseminating information about the epidemic in the early period of the COVID-19 outbreak. In conclusion, creative and general publicity had differing effects in different periods of the COVID-19 outbreak, which may relate to the characteristics of the publicity format and people's psychological conditions in different periods of the COVID-19 outbreak. (shrink)

Governments have adopted strict home quarantine measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. A monotonous, barren, and under-stimulating environment can cause state boredom, and people often deal with boredom via novelty-seeking behavior. Novelty-seeking behavior can be divided into “novelty input” and “novelty output.” The former refers to obtaining novel information such as browsing the Web; the latter refers to engaging in creative behavior such as literary creation. This study explores the relationship between two types of novelty-seeking behavior and individual state boredom during (...) home quarantine, along with the moderation effect of trait creativity. The study sample consists of 582 Chinese college students who were quarantined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, the Williams Creativity Aptitude Test, and self-compiled questionnaires of novelty input and novelty output. The results show that there is no significant relationship between novelty input or novelty output and boredom during the COVID-19 quarantine. Trait creativity is found to negatively moderate the relationship between the two means of novelty seeking and boredom. Specifically, novelty output negatively predicts the state boredom of individuals with high creativity, while novelty input positively predicts the state boredom of individuals with low creativity. Our findings suggest that different novelty-seeking behaviors may have different effects on the boredom level of individuals with high versus low creativity during quarantine. During a quarantine period, individuals should avoid excessively engaging in novelty input behaviors aimed at escaping boring situations. (shrink)