Self-concept clarity reflects how confidently and clearly an individual defines the self-belief, and it is theorized to help individuals to be more resilient in the face of stressors. The present study aimed at investigating how self-concept clarity may be implicated in the stress process related to the COVID-19 outbreak, by examining its association with daily negative affect, as a short-term adaptational outcome. The impact of the total number of positive cases, as an objective index of COVID-19 spreading, on negative affect was also tested. Participants were 287 young Italian adults (52% female; M_age = 22.68 years, SD_age = 2.62), who completed twelve daily diaries (of which five after the lockdown measure was introduced). Results from multilevel growth modeling showed that individuals low in self-concept clarity reported the highest levels of negative affect across the study period, compared to individuals high in self-concept clarity. Moreover, after the issuing of the lockdown measure, individuals high in self-concept clarity showed a steeper increase in their daily level of negative affect, compared to individuals low in self-concept clarity, indicating their responsiveness to the new situation. The total number of new cases was not related to daily negative affect. These findings attest the protective role of self-concept clarity and its impact on emotional responding to the lockdown measure in Italy.

Emotional inertia is a central feature of emotion dynamics and it refers to the degree to which emotional states are self‐predictive and linger over time, describing their resistance to change. It is related to several indicators of maladjustment, yet there is limited research on its correlates in the workplace, where it may be particularly relevant as emotional experiences deeply influence organizational life. In two experience‐sampling studies, we studied temporal dependency of negative emotional states at work in terms of emotional inertia. In a first study ( n = 128), we investigated the association between exhaustion, the core dimension of burnout, with inertia of negative emotions. In a second study ( n = 116), we aimed to replicate findings from the first study and additionally examined the moderating role of inertia of negative emotions in the relationship between negative emotions at work and counterproductive work behaviour. The findings show that exhaustion is consistently associated with inertia of negative emotions, and that inertia of negative emotions aggravates the relation between negative emotions and workers' counterproductive work behaviour.