Disease History and Life History Predict Behavioral Control of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

It is puzzling why countries do not all implement stringent behavioral control measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 even though preventive behaviors have been proven to be the only effective means to stop the pandemic. We provide a novel evolutionary life history explanation whereby pathogenic and parasitic prevalence represents intrinsic rather than extrinsic mortality risk that drives slower life history strategies and the related disease control motivation in all animals but especially humans. Our theory was tested and supported based on publicly available data involving over 150 countries. Countries having a higher historical prevalence of infectious diseases are found to adopt slower life history strategies that are related to prompter COVID-19 containment actions by the government and greater compliance by the population. Findings could afford governments novel insight into the design of more effective COVID-19 strategies that are based on enhancing a sense of control, vigilance, and compliance in the general population.

Slow Life History Strategies and Increases in Externalizing and Internalizing Problems During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…First, the K‐SF‐42 used in the present study is intended to measure “a set of cognitive and behavioral indicators of LH strategy” (Figueredo et al., 2017 , p. 4) that is narrower in meaning than the original construct used in biological research that focuses on biological, physiological, and behavioral dimensions of LH. However, our COVID‐19‐related aim and disease control involve primarily cognitive and behavioral systems (Lu et al., 2021 ). Second, participants were asked to report the extent to which their externalizing and internalizing increased during the pandemic, but we did not administer the same externalizing and internalizing questionnaires during the pandemic as we did before the outbreak of the pandemic and thus were unable to make direct comparisons between two administrations.…”

“…Collectively, such regulatory biobehavioral responses are known as fast and slow life history (LH) tradeoff strategies. They regulate human development and behavior (Chang & Lu, 2017 ; Del Giudice et al., 2015 ; Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer, 2009 ; Stearns, 1992 ), including responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic (Lu et al., 2021 ). The present study aimed to use the evolutionary LH framework to examine the psychological impact of the COVID‐19 global pandemic on a sample of young people.…”

Changes in death fear during COVID-19 in Hubei, China: The effects of life-history and current external environment.

“…LH theory have identified extrinsic mortality–morbidity (i.e., all unpreventable sources of mortality), intrinsic component of mortality risk (i.e., mortality-causing threats that an organism has some control in overcoming), and unpredictability (i.e., the extent to which individuals cannot predict future events) as the key dimensions that calibrate LH manifestations (Ellis et al, 2009; Stearns, 1992). Most pathogen stress and infectious diseases (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) represent intrinsic risks because they do not cause species-wide adult mortalities, instead, these risks are differentially tolerated or resisted by individuals that lead to individual differences in disease susceptibility or defensibility (Lu et al, 2021; Schmid-Hempel, 2003). Because of the perception of environmental unpredictability during the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals might continually monitor their environments’ specific features or mortality cues (e.g., death counts, regional mortality rates, and infection rate) that could sensitize their LH strategy.…”

Environmental risks, life history strategy, and developmental psychology

“…Unpredictability has been operationalized as changes or inconsistencies in life (e.g., household moves, paternal transitions, taken by social services; Belsky et al, 2012; Brumbach et al, 2009; Szepsenwol et al, 2017, 2019), accumulated frequency of uncontrollable, stressful life events (Chang, Lu, Lansford, Bornstein, et al, 2019a; Chang, Lu, Lansford, Skinner, et al, 2019b; Zhu et al, 2018), or family income changes (Chang, Lu, Lansford, Bornstein, et al, 2019a; Chang, Lu, Lansford, Skinner, et al, 2019b). In other cases, measures of morbidity‐mortality threats do not explicitly distinguish between harshness and unpredictability, such as neighborhood insecurity and family chaos (Chang, Lu, Lansford, Bornstein, et al, 2019a; Chang, Lu, Lansford, Skinner, et al, 2019b), pathogen pressures (Lu et al, 2021), or worries about intergroup violence (Zhu et al, 2021; Zhu & Chang, 2020).…”