The Mediating Role of Meaning-Making in the Relationship Between Mental Time Travel and Positive Emotions in Stress-Related Blogs: Big Data Text Analysis Research

BACKGROUND: Given the ubiquity of stress, a key focus of stress research is exploring how to better coexist with 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. Text analysis identified mental time travel words, meaning-making words, and positive emotion words in stress-related posts. RESULTS: The constructed mediation model of mental time travel words (time words), meaning-making words (causal and insightful words), and positive poststress emotions validated positive adaptation following stress. A mini-meta-analysis of two different mediation models constructed in the two subsamples indicated a stable mediation effect across the 2 random subsamples. The combined effect size (B) obtained was .013 (SE 0.003, 95% CI 0.007-0.018; P<.001), 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. Mental time travel serves as a psychological strategy to facilitate positive adaptation to stressful situations.