3.1.1. Emotions

The PANAS scale is useful for diagnosing the sign and intensity of emotions experienced by people. The scale result makes it possible to evaluate the current positive and negative emotions. The results of the PANAS are presented in Table 2.

**Table 2.** The characteristics of the study participants regarding the level of positive and negative affect.


<sup>1</sup> PA—Positive Affect, <sup>2</sup> NA—Negative Affect.

It is assumed that people who obtain higher results in the subscale of positive affect (PA) are generally mentally healthy and socially adjusted, and they experience anxiety less frequently. In turn, people who obtain higher results in the subscale of negative affect are characterized by worse psychosocial functioning [21]. Whereas the sample was heterogenous in terms of experiencing positive emotions, more than half of the respondents displayed negative emotions in a pandemic situation. Therefore, feelings such as anxiety, fear, nervousness, and worry were common in the research group.

#### 3.1.2. Mood

In the Polish adaptation of the UMACL scale, mood is defined as "an affective experience with a moderate time of duration (at least several minutes), unrelated to an object or related to a quasi-object, which includes three dimensions of the essential affect: tense arousal, energetic arousal and hedonic tone" [23]. The results of the UMACL are presented in Table 3.


**Table 3.** The characteristics of the study participants regarding the level of mood dimensions.

<sup>1</sup> HT—Hedonic Tone, <sup>2</sup> TA—Tense Arousal, <sup>3</sup> EA—Energetic Arousal.

Positive mood is expressed in a high result in HT and EA, and a low result in TA. The reverse, i.e., a low level of hedonic tone, a low level of energetic arousal, and a high level of tense arousal, indicates a negative mood. The study showed a decrease in mood in the research group, as evidenced by the low level of hedonic tone (HT), which refers to pleasant-unpleasant feelings; low level of energetic arousal (EA), which refers to the energy to act; and high level of tense arousal (TA), which refers to anxiety.
