Objectives
Optimistic bias refers to the phenomenon that individuals believe bad things are less likely to happen to themselves than to others. However, whether optimistic bias could vary across age and culture is unknown. The present study aims to investigate: 1) whether individuals exhibit optimistic bias in the context of COVID-19 pandemic; 2) and whether age and culture would moderate such bias.
Method
1051 participants recruited from China, Israel and the US took the online survey. Risk perceptions consists of three questions: estimating the infected probability of different social distance groups (i.e., self, close others, and non-close others), the days that it would take for the number of new infections to decrease to zero and the trend of infections in regions of different geographical distances (i.e., local place, other places inside participants’ country and other countries). Participants in China and the US also reported their personal communal values measured by Schwartz’s Value Survey.
Results
Results from HLM generally confirmed that 1) all participants exhibited optimistic bias to some extent, and 2) with age, Chinese participants had a higher level of optimistic bias than Israeli and US participants. Compared to their younger counterparts, older Chinese are more likely to believe that local communities are at lower risk of COVID-19 than other countries.
Discussion
These findings support the hypothesis that age differences in risk perceptions might be influenced by cultural context. Further analysis indicated that such cultural and age variations in optimistic bias were likely to be driven by age-related increase in internalized cultural values.
The purpose of the present study is twofold: (1) to investigate the differences in terms of physical and mental health between those who provide grandparental care and those who do not and (2) to explore the mechanism that connects grandparental caregiving and health-related outcomes. Methods: Two studies (a cross-sectional and a short-term longitudinal follow-up) were conducted. The cross-sectional study (Study 1) examined 148 older adults who provided grandparental care and another 150 older adults who did not. A small longitudinal follow-up study (Study 2) was conducted among 102 older adults randomly selected from Study 1, of which 52 were older adults who provided grandparental care, and another 50 older adults were those who did not. Health status (measured by SF-36), lonely dissatisfaction (measured by Lonely Dissatisfaction Subscale of PGC-MS), and cognitive functions (measured by subscales of WAIS) as well as demographics were measured in both studies. Results: Results of both the cross-sectional and longitudinal studies showed that, compared with older adults who did not provide grandparental care, those providing grandparental care had significantly better physical and mental health as well as reduced lonely dissatisfaction. Further path analysis showed that lonely dissatisfaction mediated the association between providing grandparental care and enhancement in functions such that providing grandparental care could reduce lonely dissatisfaction, which, in turn, could improve their physical and mental health even after controlling for their cognitive functions. Discussion: These results suggest that providing grandparental care can improve older adults' physical and mental health through reduced lonely dissatisfaction.
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