Curtailment of Civil Liberties and Subjective Life Satisfaction

Abstract

This analysis focuses on the lockdown measures in the context of the Covid-19 crisis in Spring 2020 in Germany. In a randomized survey experiment, respondents were asked to evaluate their current life satisfaction after being provided with varying degrees of information about the lethality of Covid-19. We use reactance as a measure of the intensity of a preference for freedom to explain the variation in the observed subjective life satisfaction loss. Our results suggest that it is not high reactance alone that is associated with large losses of life satisfaction due to the curtailment of liberties. The satisfaction loss occurs in particular in combination with receiving information about the (previously overestimated) lethality of Covid-19.

The Return of Happiness - Resilience in Times of Pandemic

“…This result is also in accordance with the findings of other studies (see e.g. Dawes et al, 2021;Huebener et al, 2021;Windsteiger et al, 2020). The effect of children on overall LS change ∆LS02 is not significant according to our results, which means that during the adaptation phase the positive effects of having children seem to have outweighed the negative effects of the impact phase.…”

“…377;Kahneman and Riis, 2005;or Mogilner and Norton, 2019). These problems are less dramatic in the context of our study, since our results and conclusions do not refer to absolute LS levels, but to differences in LS levels (in this context see also Arampatzi et al, 2020or Windsteiger et al, 2020. We assume that the "remembering self" (Kahneman) of most respondents is subject to a similar kind of memory bias regarding previous levels of life satisfaction, so that the LS changes ∆LS01 (= LS1 -LS0), ∆LS12 (= LS2 -LS1) and ∆LS02 (= LS2 -LS0) are meaningful in our context (see Fig.…”

“…e.g. Entringer et al, 2020;Gonzalez-Bernal, 2021;Hertwig et al, 2020;Windsteiger et al, 2020). Reasons for this result might be that women suffered more from loneliness than men during the crisis (Entringer et al, 2020) and were more worried about their health than men (Hertwig et al, 2020).…”

“…e.g. Bidzan-Bluma et al, 2020;Cheng et al, 2020;de Pedraza et al, 2020;Dymecka et al, 2020;Hamermesh, 2020;Huebener et al, 2021;Rogowska et al, 2020;Windsteiger et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020). While these studies mainly aimed at the first impact of the crisis on people's wellbeing, this paper here focusses on their resilience over a longer period in 2020.…”

Prevention for oneself or others? Psychological and social factors that explain social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a worldwide health threat and causes major changes in everyday life ( Blom et al, 2020 ; Windsteiger et al, 2020 ). Until there is a cure or vaccine for the disease, the most effective way to prevent a collapse of the healthcare system, which would lead to many deaths, appears to be social distancing ( Greenstone and Nigam, 2020 ).…”