Disease, perceived infectibility and threat reactivity: a COVID-19 study

Abstract

We investigate whether COVID-19 exposure changes participants’ threat-detection threshold. Sensitivity to threat was measured in a signal detection task among 397 British adults who also reported how much vulnerable they felt to infectious disease. Participants’ data were then matched to the number of confirmed COVID-19 collected from the NHS database. We found that participants who perceive themselves as more likely to catch infectious diseases displayed a higher negativity bias in response to increased COVID-19 cases. In addition, we found a significant effect of education on participants’ punishment responsiveness in response to COVID-19 exposure. A second wave of data collection is planned exactly two weeks after the first one. The goal of this second wave is to replicate the findings and document the impact of increasing COVID-19 cases and deaths on people’s psychology.