JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Given the ubiquity of stress, a key focus of stress research is exploring how to better coexist with stress. Meaning-making is a kind of coping strategy which can be induced by mental time travel, and promote positive emotions under stress. In daily life, individuals can trigger meaning-making by describing the future and the past on Weibo. Does this meaning-making promote positive emotions under stress?

Objective:

This study conducted text analysis on stress-related Weibo posts using a web crawler to investigate whether these posts contained positive emotions, as well as elements of mental time travel and meaning-making. A mediation model of mental time travel, meaning-making, and positive emotions was constructed to examine whether meaning-making triggered by mental time travel can foster positive emotions under stress.

Methods:

Using Python 3.8, the original public data from active Weibo users were crawled, yielding 331,711 stress-related posts. To avoid false positives, these posts were randomly divided into two large samples for cross-validation (Sample 1: n = 165,374; Sample 2: n = 166,337). Google’s Natural Language Processing Application Programming Interface was used for word segmentation, followed by text and mediation analysis using the Chinese psychological analysis system “Wenxin.” A mini-meta-analysis of the mediation path coefficients was conducted.

Results:

Text analysis identified mental time travel words, meaning-making words, and positive emotion words in stress-related posts. The constructed mediation model of mental time travel words (time words), meaning-making words (causal and insightful words), and positive post-stress emotions validated positive adaptation following stress. A mini-meta-analysis of eight different mediation models constructed in the two subsamples indicated a stable mediation effect across the two random subsamples, demonstrating that meaning-making triggered by mental time travel in stress-related blog posts can predict positive emotions under stress.

Conclusions:

Individuals can adapt positively to stress by engaging in meaning-making processes that are triggered by mental time travel and reflected in their social media posts. The study’s mediation model confirmed that mental time travel leads to meaning-making, which fosters positive emotional responses to stress.