Social ties, fears and bias during the COVID-19 pandemic: Fragile and flexible mindsets

Abstract

Fears and social ties have been frequently discussed during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, it is still insufficiently examined how people have developed or mitigated social ties, bias and inter-group conflicts caused by fear. This review examined relevant COVID-19 literature and the psychology of anxiety, distress and aggression to consider how these adverse behaviours might be neutralised by cognitive flexibility. The results showed that social ties function as both risk and protective factors. The importance of social ties was repeatedly described as alleviating loneliness; nevertheless, people also expressed stigma-related anxiety (fear of criticism via empathic distress) associated with peer pressures and hostile vigilantism. Social ties and empathy have strengthened human cohesion and helped reconcile relations, but they also reinforced unfavourable biased bonds, terror and rumours that benefited in-group members while discriminating against out-group individuals. Furthermore, cognitive flexibility may assuage these negative consequences through shifting attention and perspective. Context-adjusted viewpoints and reciprocal dialogues seem crucial. The subsequent mitigation of misunderstandings, fear-induced bias, and maladaptive distress appraisal may lead to more reasonable and flexible recognition of social ties. The significance of this conclusion is in its potential for implementing intervention programmes to reduce pandemic-induced fear, and it could help to address other relevant issues, such as refugee crises and displaced people, a phenomenon that is globally developing discrimination, stigma and polarised blaming. It is worth further investigating how flexibility and inter-group empathy help pursue humanitarianism.

Development and cross-national investigation of a model explaining participation in WHO-recommended and placebo behaviours to prevent COVID-19 infection

“…Further studies should focus on determinants of preventive behaviours that are more specific to other cultures that are not incorporated into the models such as HBM or TMS. Previous research suggests that in the case of collective cultures these factors may for example include the belief that others find it important to engage in preventive actions 58 , anticipated stigma, or fear of offending and distressing others 59 . Also, it is worth mentioning that in addition to collectivism-individualism, other dimensions associated with culture such as uncertainty avoidance 60 , tightness-looseness 61 or honour culture 62 can be important for understanding adherence to preventive behaviours during epidemics 55 , 63 .…”

COVID-19 policies and the arising of debate on twitter

“…Specifically, the issue of the diffusion of the confirmation bias (Bessi and Quattrociocchi, 2015;Del Vicario et al, 2016) linked to the individual selection of information and news that confirm one's prejudices, including the sources of access to information, is significant, up to the creation of customized user profiles. Besides, other biases may emerge or overlap with this by depending on additional on line or off line relational, social, and cognitive dynamics and/or psychological distress and anxiety (Tei and Fujino, 2022). Furthermore, different studies highlight how behind conflicts there are causes that go beyond disinformation and individualism and that are related to many causes (Bennett and Pfetsch, 2018).…”

The educational value of sense of coherence for grief care

“…This approach may be enriched through raising problems, debating, and reflecting. Self-reflection can nurture the learner's ability to deal with change, empathize with patients/families, and manage emotions after difficult patient care experiences (e.g., through flexible, context-adjusted perspective-taking; Serwint et al, 2016 ; Tei and Fujino, 2022 ). Armed with such skills, learners may be better poised to provide grief care.…”