The COVID-19 pandemic is far more than a health crisis: it has unpredictably changed our whole way of life. As suggested by the analysis of economic data on sales, this dramatic scenario has also heavily impacted individuals’ spending levels. To better understand these changes, the present study focused on consumer behavior and its psychological antecedents. Previous studies found that crises differently affect people’s willingness to buy necessities products (i.e., utilitarian shopping) and non-necessities products (i.e., hedonic shopping). Therefore, in examining whether changes in spending levels were associated with changes in consumer behavior, we adopted a fine-grained approach disentangling between necessities and non-necessities. We administered an online survey to 3833 participants (age range 18–64) during the first peak period of the contagion in Italy. Consumer behavior toward necessities was predicted by anxiety and COVID-related fear, whereas consumer behavior toward non-necessities was predicted by depression. Furthermore, consumer behavior toward necessities and non-necessities was predicted by personality traits, perceived economic stability, and self-justifications for purchasing. The present study extended our understanding of consumer behavior changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results could be helpful to develop marketing strategies that consider psychological factors to meet actual consumers’ needs and feelings.

After the COVID-19 worldwide spread, evidence suggested a vast diffusion of negative consequences on people's mental health. Together with depression and sleep difficulties, anxiety symptoms seem to be the most diffused clinical outcome. The current contribution aimed to examine attentional bias for virus-related stimuli in people varying in their degree of health anxiety (HA). Consistent with previous literature, it was hypothesized that higher HA would predict attentional bias, tested using a visual dot-probe task, to virus-related stimuli. Participants were 132 Italian individuals that participated in the study during the lockdown phase in Italy. Results indicated that the HA level predicts attentional bias toward virus-related objects. This relationship is double mediated by the belief of contagion and by the consequences of contagion as assessed through a recent questionnaire developed to measure the fear for COVID-19. These findings are discussed in the context of cognitive-behavioral conceptualizations of anxiety suggesting a risk for a loop effect. Future research directions are outlined.

Nowadays, the use of social networks (SNs) is pervasive and ubiquitous. Among other things, SNs have become a key resource for establishing and maintaining personal relationships, as further demonstrated by the emergence of the pandemic. However, easy access to SNs may be a source of addictive behaviour, especially among the younger population. The literature highlights various psychological and physiological factors as possible predictors of vulnerability to SN addiction. This paper explores the joint effects of stress level and cognitive absorption, in the form of temporal dissociation while on SNs, on the addiction of university students to SNs. Here, 312 participants were involved in an online survey. About 14% of the sample presented a risk for SN addiction. Moreover, it was found that stress level predicted SN addiction both directly and indirectly through the effect of individual temporal dissociation, as experienced during SN usage. These results suggest a significant role of perceived stress level on addiction risk, while also pointing out additional vulnerability to SN addiction for cognitive profiles that are relatively more prone to temporal dissociation while online.

Internet addiction is an emerging issue, impacting people’s psychosocial functioning and well-being. However, the prevalence and the mechanisms underlying internet misuse are largely unknown. As with other behavioral addiction disorders, the increase and persistence of internet addiction may be favored by negative affect such as boredom. In this study, we examined the role of boredom susceptibility, as a personality trait, in predicting the risk of internet addiction. Furthermore, we analyzed the attentional mechanisms that may exacerbate dysfunctional internet behaviors. Specifically, we assessed the mediating role of attentional bias toward social media cues on the relation between boredom susceptibility and internet addiction. Sixty-nine young adults were administered a dot-probe task assessing internet-related attentional bias (AB) and questionnaires measuring internet addiction (IAT) and boredom susceptibility (BS-BSSS). Correlation and t-test analyses confirmed that the tendency to experience boredom and selective attention toward social network information was related to internet addiction. Furthermore, the mediation model indicated that AB fully explains the link between BS-BSSS and IAT. The study highlighted the crucial role of selective attentional processing behind internet addiction. The current results are useful for both researchers and clinicians as they suggest that intervention programs for internet addiction should include strategies to cope with dysfunctional cognitive processes.

The current study examines the association of individual hoarding levels with temporal discounting of different commodities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on their hoarding level, participants were assigned to the Hoarding Group (HG) or the Non-Hoarding Group (NHG). Participants performed two delay discounting tasks: a traditional task with monetary options and a modified task, where money was replaced with disposable surgical masks, a needed commodity during the pandemic. Results revealed a stronger preference for immediate commodity, therefore a higher discount rate, when evaluating surgical masks compared to money in the whole sample, and an overall higher tendency in discounting both type of rewards in the NHG compared to the HG. Moreover, non-hoarders discounted money significantly more than hoarders, while no significant differences were detected in the surgical mask version of the task. Possible explanations for this result are discussed in the light of a situational frame that makes salient the notion of scarcity, like the one induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The hoarding dimension of cluttering was found to be the only dimension to significantly correlate with the discount rate on surgical masks. Altogether, these findings shed light on the role of general hoarding level and specific hoarding dimensions on intertemporal preferences with different commodities by contributing to the theoretical debate about impulsivity in hoarders' behavior. Furthermore, the present results help to understand the general population's preferences during times of crisis, thus contributing to the investigation of the effects of COVID-19 on consumers' behavior.