How evolutionary behavioural sciences can help us understand behaviour in a pandemic

Arnot, Megan; Brandl, Eva; Campbell, Olympia L K; Chen, Yuan; Du, Juan; Dyble, Mark; Emmott, Emily H; Ge, Erhao; Kretschmer, Luke D W; Mace, Ruth; Micheletti, Alberto J. C.; Nila, Sarah; Peacey, Sarah; Salalι, Gül Deniz; Zhang, Hanzhi

doi:10.1093/emph/eoaa038

Cited by 42 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 122 publications

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“…The growing problem of conspiracy theory-driven noncooperation is worth noting in the present context (Arnot et al, 2020;Prichard and Christman, 2020). As an epiphenomenon of adaptive rationalization mechanisms, conspiratorial thinking may be triggered as people struggle to gain a sense of control during crises such as COVID-19 (Yong et al, 2020).…”

Section: The Emerging Role Of Conspiratorial Thinking In Noncooperatimentioning

confidence: 97%

Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines as a Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach to Cooperation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yong

Choy

2021

Front. Psychol.

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Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation.

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Section: The Emerging Role Of Conspiratorial Thinking In Noncooperatimentioning

confidence: 97%

Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines as a Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach to Cooperation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yong

Choy

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…In sum, the psychobehavioral profiles of those non-compliant with health measures are strikingly similar to those of eveningoriented individuals, with both profiles aligned with fast life history strategies and a neglect of health measures and precautions (Arnot et al, 2020;Corpuz et al, 2020). Some nighttime activities such as dining in restaurants and attending bars and nightclubs have been linked to superspreading events; at night there is less health measure enforcement; and at night as well as indoors, the virus has environmental conditions enabling its persistence in aerosol for longer than outdoors during the day.…”

Section: Eveningness Profilementioning

confidence: 86%

“…Evolutionary approaches to human behavior have the potential of uncovering hidden patterns and deep roots of many seemingly disparate findings (DeBruine, 2009;Gentle and Goetz, 2010;Stephen et al, 2014;Buss, 2020). And the context of pandemics, particularly the current COVID-19 context, is no different (Arnot et al, 2020;Dezecache et al, 2020;Seitz et al, 2020;Troisi, 2020;Luoto and Varella, 2021). Besides the evolved tendencies to respond to cues of diseases avoiding contagion (i.e., behavioral immune system; Shook et al, 2020;Stevenson et al, 2021), and to deal with pathogens (i.e., immune system; Krams et al, 2020), there are many other evolutionary factors that play a role in a pandemic situation (Arnot et al, 2020;Seitz et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And the context of pandemics, particularly the current COVID-19 context, is no different (Arnot et al, 2020;Dezecache et al, 2020;Seitz et al, 2020;Troisi, 2020;Luoto and Varella, 2021). Besides the evolved tendencies to respond to cues of diseases avoiding contagion (i.e., behavioral immune system; Shook et al, 2020;Stevenson et al, 2021), and to deal with pathogens (i.e., immune system; Krams et al, 2020), there are many other evolutionary factors that play a role in a pandemic situation (Arnot et al, 2020;Seitz et al, 2020). For instance, the evolved sex differences in psychological tendencies might help to explain why women are more careful and comply with safety measures more than men, and importantly why female leaders are more successful in minimizing deaths in a pandemic context than male leaders (Luoto and Varella, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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COVID-19 Pandemic on Fire: Evolved Propensities for Nocturnal Activities as a Liability Against Epidemiological Control

et al. 2021

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Humans have been using fire for hundreds of millennia, creating an ancestral expansion toward the nocturnal niche. The new adaptive challenges faced at night were recurrent enough to amplify existing psychological variation in our species. Night-time is dangerous and mysterious, so it selects for individuals with higher tendencies for paranoia, risk-taking, and sociability (because of security in numbers). During night-time, individuals are generally tired and show decreased self-control and increased impulsive behaviors. The lower visibility during night-time favors the partial concealment of identity and opens more opportunities for disinhibition of self-interested behaviors. Indeed, individuals with an evening-oriented chronotype are more paranoid, risk-taking, extraverted, impulsive, promiscuous, and have higher antisocial personality traits. However, under some circumstances, such as respiratory pandemics, the psychobehavioral traits favored by the nocturnal niche might be counter-productive, increasing contagion rates of a disease that can evade the behavioral immune system because its disease cues are often nonexistent or mild. The eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis presented here suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the evening-oriented psychobehavioral profile can have collectively harmful consequences: there is a clash of core tendencies between the nocturnal chronotype and the recent viral transmission-mitigating safety guidelines and rules. The pandemic safety protocols disrupt much normal social activity, particularly at night when making new social contacts is desired. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is contagious even in presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, which enables it to mostly evade our evolved contagious disease avoidance mechanisms. A growing body of research has indirectly shown that individual traits interfering with social distancing and anti-contagion measures are related to those of the nocturnal chronotype. Indeed, some of the social contexts that have been identified as superspreading events occur at night, such as in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Furthermore, nocturnal environmental conditions favor the survival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus much longer than daytime conditions. We compare the eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis with other factors related to non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, namely sex, age, and life history. Although there is not yet a direct link between the nocturnal chronotype and non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, security measures and future empirical research should take this crucial evolutionary mismatch and adaptive metaproblem into account, and focus on how to avoid nocturnal individuals becoming superspreaders, offering secure alternatives for nocturnal social activities.

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“…Another factor explaining the reported differences in following government guidelines (social distancing, staying home, wearing a mask, frequent hand washing and avoiding crowded places and social gatherings) may be the cultural differences in collectivist attitude (individualism score for Turkey was 37, as opposed to 89 for the UK) 42 . Collectivist cultures may be more receptive to government guidelines and interventions, such as contact tracing, during an epidemic compared to individualistic cultures 43 . Indeed, in a recent study levels of collectivism was associated with higher intentions to engage in social distancing behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic 44 .…”

Section: Country-level Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive function and correlates of anxiety during a pandemic

Salalι

Uysal

Bevan

2021

Preprint

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The majority of the studies to date have focused on the negative aspects of anxiety. Anxiety, however, is an evolved emotional response serving to decrease mortality risk. Pandemics are characterized by increased mortality risk coupled with future uncertainties, both of which result in heightened anxiety. Here, we examined the factors associated with anxiety levels and risk avoidance behaviours during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK (N = 1088) and Turkey (N = 3935). We asked how individual time perspectives (future orientation and present moment attention) affect anxiety in an uncertain time, and whether an elevated anxiety response reduces mortality risk by promoting risk avoidance behaviour. We found that people who were more future-oriented and less tolerant of uncertainties had higher levels of generalized and pandemic anxieties. Those with higher anxiety levels engaged in risk avoidance behaviours more frequently. Mindfulness reduced anxiety levels without reducing risk avoidance, suggesting that mindfulness-based therapies can be used to alleviate anxiety without interfering with the benefits of a healthy anxiety response. Trust in others reduced anxiety, but also reduced risk avoidant behaviour. Several behavioural and social factors contributed to the country-level differences in the overall anxiety levels and engagement in risk avoidance behaviours.

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How evolutionary behavioural sciences can help us understand behaviour in a pandemic

Cited by 42 publications

References 122 publications

Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines as a Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach to Cooperation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines as a Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach to Cooperation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 Pandemic on Fire: Evolved Propensities for Nocturnal Activities as a Liability Against Epidemiological Control

Adaptive function and correlates of anxiety during a pandemic

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