Functional fear predicts public health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic

Harper, Craig A.; Satchell, Liam; Fido, Dean; Latzman, Robert D.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/jkfu3

Cited by 153 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Survey data have found that compliance increased with empathy for vulnerable groups in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany [13], while reported willingness to comply was higher for shorter rather than longer expected periods of restriction in Italy [14]. However, a recent international open web-based survey of 324 individuals found that fear of contracting the virus was the only strong predictor of social distancing behavior [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The association between age, COVID-19 symptoms, and social distancing behavior in the United States

Canning

Karra

Dayalu

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background:Public health authorities recommend that people practice social distancing, especially if they have symptoms of coronavirus disease , or are older and more at risk of serious illness if they become infected. We test the hypothesis that these groups are following these recommendations and are more likely to undertake social distancing. Methods:We conducted an open online survey of 4,676 U.S. adults aged 18 and older between April 4 and April 7, 2020. We model the effects of age and common COVID-19 symptoms in the last two weeks on going out of the home for non-healthcare reasons the day before taking the survey, using a logistic model and the number of close contacts (within 6 feet) that respondents had with non-household members, using a Poisson count model. Our models control for several covariates, including other flu-like symptoms, sex, education, income, whether the respondent worked in February, household size, population density in the respondent's ZIP code, state fixed effects, and the day of completion of the survey. We also weight our analyses to make the sample representative of the U.S. adult population. Findings:About 52 percent of the adult United States population went out of their home the previous day. On average, adults had close contact with 1.9 non-household members. We find that having at least one COVID-19 symptom (fever, dry cough, or shortness of breath) increased the likelihood of going out the previous day and having additional close contacts with non-household members; however, the estimates were not statistically significant. When disaggregating our analysis by COVID-19 symptoms, we find no strong evidence of greater social distancing by people with a fever or cough in the last two weeks, but we do find that those who experienced shortness of breath have fewer close contacts, with an incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 0.49 (95% CI: 0.30-0.78). Having other flulike symptoms reduces the odds of going out by 0.32 (95% CI: 0.18-0.60) and the incidence rate of having close contacts by 42 percent (IRR = 0.58; 95% CI: 0.38-0.88). We find that older people are just as likely to leave their homes as younger people, but people over the age of 50 had less than half the predicted number of close contacts than those who were younger than 30. Our approach has the limitation that the survey sample is self-selected. Our findings may therefore be subject to selection bias that is not adequately controlled for by weighting. In addition, the possibility exists of confounding of the results due to omitted variable bias. Conclusions:We provide evidence that older people are having significantly fewer close contacts than younger people, which is in line with the public health authorities' recommendations. We also find that people experiencing shortness of breath are practicing more intense social distancing. However, we find that those with two other common COVID-19 symptoms, fever and dry cough, are not engaging in greater social distancing, suggesting that increased targeting on relevant symptoms, an...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The association between age, COVID-19 symptoms, and social distancing behavior in the United States

Canning

Karra

Dayalu

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…The use of psychiatric tools could help to distinguish between functional and dysfunctional anxiety (Harper, Satchell, Fido, & Latzman, 2020).…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prevalence and predictors of the early psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with SARS and MERS: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis

Vos¹

2020

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Objective: This meta-analysis examines the psychological impact of COVID-19, SARS and MERS pandemics on health-care workers, patients and the general population, in line with PRISMA, MOOSE, MARS and CASP guidelines. Methods: Searches were conducted on 28-29 March 2020 in Pubmed, Medline, PsycInfo, APA articles, Web-of-Knowledge and scholar.google.com. Hedges’ g was calculated with random-effects models. Results: The final selection included 75 publications from 15,984 papers. Twenty-six studies described the impact of COVID-19 in 104,361 participants, showing that 59% (95%CI: 37%-85%) of health-care workers experienced acute/post-traumatic stress, and 37% (95%CI: 30%-54%) experienced depression, general distress, insomnia and/or anxiety. Of all COVID-19 patients, 32% (95% CI: 22%-42%) experienced acute/post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, insomnia and/or distress. In the general population, 25% (95%CI: 15%-35%) experienced any of these psychological symptoms. COVID-19 had a larger impact than SARS/MERS in 28,499 participants in 44 studies. During SARS/MERS pandemics, 33% (95%CI: 25%-41%) of health-care workers, 31% (95%CI: 18%-45%) of SARS/MERS-patients and 15% (95%CI: 7%-23%) of the general population experienced any of these psychological symptoms. The psychological impact was predicted (R<.20-.40>) by the individual’s physical health, restrictions to leisure and social activities, and quarantine. Frontline health-care workers experienced a larger psychological impact than the general population, particularly if they worked with infected patients and reported unfavourable work circumstances. Conclusions: This study can be used to predict the prevalence of mental health problems during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and to predict which individuals are most at risk of developing mental health problems. Health care workers and vulnerable individuals should be psychologically screened and offered mental health-care. Quarantine should be as short as possible, to prevent mental health problems. Public health significance statementThis meta-analysis indicates that between one-third of the general population and half of all health care workers experience a moderate to severe mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This impact is larger than during SARS and MERS pandemics. The psychological impact on health care workers is mainly predicted by their work circumstances, and the impact on the general population by their pre-existing physical and mental well-being and the psychological effects of quarantine.

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“…In addition to partisanship, we also investigated the influence of personality traits and other individual differences that previous research suggests should structure people's acceptance of illiberal policies in order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic: authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1996;Feldman, 2003;Hetherington & Suhay, 2011;Stenner, 2005), pathogen disgust sensitivity (Aarøe, Petersen, & Arceneaux, 2017;Kam & Estes, 2016;Tybur et al, 2016) and anxiety (Brouard, Vasilopoulos, & Becher, 2018;Harper, Satchell, Fido, & Latzman, 2020;Merolla & Zechmeister, 2009). Intriguingly, contrary to our preregistered expectations, we find no consistent evidence in these well-powered tests that these individual-level traits cause people to be more or less supportive of assaults on civil liberties in the name of fighting the pandemic.…”

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confidence: 99%

Is COVID-19 a Threat to Liberal Democracy?

Arceneaux¹,

Bn²,

Hobolt³

et al. 2020

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A defining feature of liberal democracy is the respect for and protection of core civil liberties. Yet, major crises, such as wars, natural disasters and pandemics, can provide a pretext to undermine liberal democratic norms. This raises questions of whether citizens are willing to support policies that violate their civil liberties in a crisis and whether some individuals are more likely to a support such encroachments. We conducted a series well-powered preregistered conjoint and vignette experiments in the US and UK during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that people’s attitudes are relatively malleable and that endorsements by an in-group party and trusted experts can shift support for measures that erode civil liberties. However, the evidence also reveals resistance to certain illiberal policy measures, including banning protests and indefinitely postponing elections. This indicates the presence of liberal democratic norms, even when partisan elites promote illiberal policies.

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Functional fear predicts public health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic

Cited by 153 publications

References 21 publications

The association between age, COVID-19 symptoms, and social distancing behavior in the United States

The association between age, COVID-19 symptoms, and social distancing behavior in the United States

Prevalence and predictors of the early psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with SARS and MERS: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis

Is COVID-19 a Threat to Liberal Democracy?

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