Funny memes can help people better cope with the stress associated with corona virus infection. This is suggested by the American study of the effect of these funny engraved images published in the journal “Psychology of Popular Media”.
“When the epidemic lasted, I became more interested in how people use social media, especially memes, to think about epidemics,” said Jessica Mirik, a leading writer at Penn State University.
Covit-19 memes help
She and her team surveyed 748 people online in December last year to find out if watching various memes cope with emotions, fears, information processing and the corona crisis. To do this, researchers collected hundreds of popular memes on related sites and classified them into different categories, for example depending on whether or not the title refers to Covid-19.
The test subjects were then randomly assigned different memes or, as a check, given different types of non-pictorial texts. The researchers examined how beautiful and fun the participants found in the media they saw, what emotions they reported, and how prepared they were to deal with the infection.
Safe handling of infection
In doing so, they found that people who watch memes exhibit greater levels of humor and more positive emotions than others, which is indirectly linked to reducing infectious stress. Lessons watched by memes with topics about Govt-19 are more likely to experience less stress about the epidemic than those who saw memes with topics about other topics.
“Although the World Health Organization recommends that people avoid high Govt-related media for their mental health benefit, our research shows that memes about Govt-19 can help people improve their ability to cope with infection and feel safer,” summarizes lead author Mirik. (SDA)