Pairing facts with imagined consequences improves pandemic-related risk perception

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic reached staggering new peaks during a global resurgence more than a year after the crisis began. Although public health guidelines initially helped to slow the spread of disease, widespread pandemic fatigue and prolonged harm to financial stability and mental well-being contributed to this resurgence. In the late stage of the pandemic, it became clear that new interventions were needed to support long-term behavior change. Here, we examined subjective perceived risk about COVID-19 and the relationship between perceived risk and engagement in risky behaviors. In study 1 (n = 303), we found that subjective perceived risk was likely inaccurate but predicted compliance with public health guidelines. In study 2 (n = 735), we developed a multifaceted intervention designed to realign perceived risk with actual risk. Participants completed an episodic simulation task; we expected that imagining a COVID-related scenario would increase the salience of risk information and enhance behavior change. Immediately following the episodic simulation, participants completed a risk estimation task with individualized feedback about local viral prevalence. We found that information prediction error, a measure of surprise, drove beneficial change in perceived risk and willingness to engage in risky activities. Imagining a COVID-related scenario beforehand enhanced the effect of prediction error on learning. Importantly, our intervention produced lasting effects that persisted after a 1- to 3-wk delay. Overall, we describe a fast and feasible online intervention that effectively changed beliefs and intentions about risky behaviors.

Intuitive judgments of “overreaction” and their relationship to compliance with public health measures.

“…In other words, we were asking for these judgments during the absolute peak of the crisis and when our participants faced the greatest risk of infection. It is difficult to determine the actual risk participants faced as we only collected information on the relatively coarse level of the state they lived in, and in any case, recent work has found that lay estimations of risk during the pandemic are somewhat more optimistic than objective calculations of risk (Sinclair, Hakimi, Stanley, Adcock, & Samanez-Larkin, 2021). As a result, it is unclear what kind of influence this timing had on our results.…”

“…That said, there are also hints about how policy communication could be improved, both from our results and from other recent investigations. Recent work has suggested that making people consider bad outcomes (which we argue they do not consider otherwise) may make them more likely to comply with public health measures (Sinclair, Hakimi, Stanley, Adcock, & Samanez-Larkin, 2021). Our findings also suggest other potential measures that might reduce judgments of overreaction and potentially compliance, such as emphasizing the specific causal mechanisms by which the intervention will prevent or mitigate bad outcomes (Study 1).…”

“…Study 4, conducted January 14-16, 2021, shortly before the approval of the first SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in the US, examined judgments about real-world public health policies to see if they correlated with the factors found in Studies 1 and 2 and also tested whether there was a link between judgments of overreaction and compliance with these policies. Other work during the COVID-19 pandemic has identified a link between perceived risk and compliance with these regulations (Sinclair, Hakimi, Stanley, Adcock, & Samanez-Larkin, 2021) or the role of trust in political leaders on judgments of perceived efficacy of these kinds of regulations (Mækelæ et al, 2020). This study seeks to determine whether judgments that these regulations are or are not overreactions influence compliance with them, above and beyond the factors that have been studied in these recent projects.…”

Stability of Risk Perception Across Pandemic and Non-pandemic Situations Among Young Adults: Evaluating the Impact of Individual Differences

“…For others, risk aversion driven by pandemic-related concerns increased, leading to lowered involvement in risky and greater involvement in health-promoting behaviors (e.g., increased hand hygiene; Shilo and Mor, 2020 ; Starks et al, 2020 ; Khan et al, 2021 ; Magnan et al, 2021 ; Shachat et al, 2021 ). Perceived risk of COVID-19 was associated with greater involvement in health-promoting behaviors that supported COVID-19 prevention (e.g., hand hygiene, maintaining social distance; Wise et al, 2020 ; Qin et al, 2021 ; Rui et al, 2021 ; Sinclair et al, 2021 ). Non-pandemic related health-promoting behaviors, such as blood donation and vaccination, were encouraged throughout the COVID-19 pandemic because, despite an element of risk, the benefits of these health-promoting behaviors outweighed potential costs.…”

Short-sighted decision-making by those not vaccinated against COVID-19

“…It is not enough to rely on predictive modeling of COVID-19 spread and vaccine uptake to guide behavioral change 3 ; identifying actual behavioral markers of vaccine hesitancy and unwillingness is the crucial next step to reduce the severity and spread of COVID-19 5 , particularly given continued emergence of COVID-19 variants. Greater insight into the decision-making processes involved in vaccination choices can lead to strategies to better align behavior with medical and public health recommendations 6 .…”