Psychological predictors of prevention behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic

Broomell, Stephen B.; Chapman, Gretchen B.; Downs, Jennifer

doi:10.1353/bsp.2020.0014

Cited by 25 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…(Bavel et al, 2020, p. 461). Initial evidence about COVID-19 supports this role for scientific, numerical, normative, and contextual information about rates of infection in preventative decisions (Broomell et al, 2020;Murray et al, 2021). The questions we take up in subsequent sections are what is missing from this account of health decision-making and whether there are crucial decisions for which this approach is fundamentally at odds with how people actually think.…”

Section: Implications Of Expectancy-value Theories For Riskymentioning

confidence: 98%

Viruses, vaccines, and COVID-19: Explaining and improving risky decision-making.

Reyna

Broniatowski

Edelson

2021

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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Risky decision-making lies at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic and will determine future viral outbreaks. Therefore, a critical evaluation of major explanations of such decision-making is of acute practical importance. We review the underlying mechanisms and predictions offered by expectancy-value and dual-process theories. We then highlight how fuzzy-trace theory builds on these approaches and provides further insight into how knowledge, emotions, values, and metacognitive inhibition influence risky decision-making through its unique mental representational architecture (i.e., parallel verbatim and gist representations of information). We discuss how social values relate to decision-making according to fuzzy-trace theory, including how categorical gist representations cue core values. Although gist often supports health-promoting behaviors such as vaccination, social distancing, and mask-wearing, why this is not always the case as with status-quo gist is explained, and suggestions are offered for how to overcome the “battle for the gist” as it plays out in social media.

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Section: Implications Of Expectancy-value Theories For Riskymentioning

confidence: 98%

Viruses, vaccines, and COVID-19: Explaining and improving risky decision-making.

Reyna

Broniatowski

Edelson

2021

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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show abstract

“…Data were collected by Dynata LLC from their online panel using quotas for age, gender, and race to establish the representativeness of our sample. The data collection, sample size, and analyses presented in Broomell, Chapman, et al (2020) were preregistered. Details of survey administration, demographics, and survey questions can be found in Broomell, Chapman, et al (2020).…”

Section: National Survey Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data collection, sample size, and analyses presented in Broomell, Chapman, et al (2020) were preregistered. Details of survey administration, demographics, and survey questions can be found in Broomell, Chapman, et al (2020). The survey generated N = 3,956 valid participant responses.…”

Section: National Survey Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the high death toll, public perceptions about the severity and risk of this pandemic are highly variable with large proportions of the public believing the pandemic’s risks were overblown 3 months into the U.S. outbreak (Mitchell et al, 2020). Anxiety and perceptions of risk regarding COVID-19 were significant predictors of intentions to perform Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended preventative behaviors at the start of the pandemic (Broomell, Chapman, et al, 2020). Furthermore, the absence of effective communications about COVID-19 in the U.S. (Noar & Austin, 2020) left citizens to form their own judgments of risk (Fischhoff & Kadvany, 2011; Slovic, 1987).…”

Section: Perceptions Of the Covid-19 Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceiving a pandemic: Global–local incompatibility and COVID-19 superspreading events.

Broomell¹,

Kane²

2021

Decision

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Superspreading events are the primary mode of infection driving the COVID-19 pandemic, but their effect on risk judgments is currently unknown. More than half a million people in the U.S. died from COVID-19 in 1 year, yet public risk perceptions of infection and mortality remain variable. Using a combination of epidemiological models and the psychological theory of global-local incompatibility, we theorize that superspreading diseases create a large variance in infections across geographic localities, leading to highly variable and inaccurate risk perceptions. This is problematic because these local infection rates fail to reveal the overall severity of the pandemic, which determines the personal risk of infection at any location in the near future. We test our predictions with a simulation study and a nationally representative study of U.S. citizens (N = 3,956) conducted in April 2020. Supporting our theory, we find that localized county-level infection rates of COVID-19 are unreliable predictors of national infection rates. However, they explain a significant proportion of variance in judgments of national infection rates, contributing to judgment errors. These results support our theoretical approach for modeling this unique judgment context as an incompatibility between global and local information, providing a framework to predict how citizens will react to novel large-scale (global) risks. Our results also help explain the extreme polarization witnessed in the U.S. regarding perceptions of the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Accounting for the variability of local experiences with a pandemic can help future generations prepare for how to respond to similar threats more effectively.

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“…Engaging in preventive behaviors is strongly correlated with self reports of risk perceptions and other beliefs. For example, a survey of a US nationally representative sample early in the pandemic (Broomell et al, 2020) found that self reported social distancing, respiratory hygiene, and mask wearing behaviors were strongly associated with the perceived effectiveness of these behaviors and modestly correlated with fear of spreading or catching the disease. Risk appraisals of perceived likelihood and perceived severity of a disease are reliably correlated with vaccination behavior (Brewer et al, 2007).…”

Section: Direct Intervention On Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking beyond cognition for risky decision making: COVID-19, the environment, and behavior.

Broomell¹,

Chapman²

2021

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

Self Cite

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Psychological predictors of prevention behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic

Cited by 25 publications

References 0 publications

Viruses, vaccines, and COVID-19: Explaining and improving risky decision-making.

Viruses, vaccines, and COVID-19: Explaining and improving risky decision-making.

Perceiving a pandemic: Global–local incompatibility and COVID-19 superspreading events.

Looking beyond cognition for risky decision making: COVID-19, the environment, and behavior.

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