“Take care, honey!”: People are more anxious about their significant others' risk behavior than about their own

Self-Other(s) Risk Decision Differences in Different Domains in the Chinese Context: A Social Value Theory Perspective

Purpose

The core question explored in this study was whether social value theory, which can explain the domain specificity of self-other differences, still was applicable when choice recipients change.

Methods

A pre-experiment and three formal experiments were conducted to explore the differences in self-other risk decision-making in different domains and different recipients from the perspective of social value theory. Experiment 1 involved 152 participants who were asked to make decisions for themselves and a single other in three risk domains. In Experiment 2, 178 participants were recruited, with money loss domain added and the "others" divided into "intimate others" to explore the effect of social distance on self-others risk decision-making in four domains. In Experiment 3, 233 participants were involved, and the number of "others" was expanded to explore the differences between "individual decision-making" and "group decision-making".

Results

In the relationship domain, individuals were more risk-averse when making decisions for themselves, while in the money gain domain and personal safety domain, individuals' risk-taking tendencies when making decisions for themselves were significantly higher than that for new friends. In the money loss domain, no significant difference was found among the three decision-maker roles. When making decisions for a group (including the decision-maker), individuals exhibit a "compromise effect" in the non-monetary domain, where their risk appetite falls between making decisions for themselves and for the group.

Conclusion

The domain differences in self-other risk decision-making can be explained by the social value theory.

The effects of empathy by caregivers on healthcare service satisfaction

Healthcare service satisfaction focuses not only on the patients but also on the caregivers' perspectives. This study explored how caregivers' empathy toward patients affects their satisfaction with healthcare services through an electroencephalography (EEG) experiment. EEG mu rhythm was used as the neural indicator to reflect empathy. The results showed that empathy reduces caregivers' evaluation of healthcare service satisfaction because they share suffering with the patients. However, implementing physician-patient communication through a process-based informed consent (IC), compared to an event-based IC, can effectively alleviate such adverse effects.

Climate policy support as a tool to control others' (but not own) environmental behavior?

Drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary to successfully mitigate climate change. Individual environmental behavior is central to this change. Given that environmental behavior necessitates 1) effortful individual self-control and 2) cooperation by others, public policy may constitute an attractive instrument for regulating one's own as well as others' environmental behavior. Framing climate change mitigation as a cooperative self-control problem, we explore the incremental predictive power of self-control and beliefs surrounding others' cooperation beyond established predictors of policy support in study 1 using machine-learning (N = 610). In study 2, we systematically test and confirm the effects of self-control and beliefs surrounding others' cooperation (N = 270). Both studies showed that personal importance of climate change mitigation and perceived insufficiency of others' environmental behavior predict policy support, while there was no strong evidence for a negative association between own-self control success and policy support. These results emerge beyond the effects of established predictors, such as environmental attitudes and beliefs, risk perception (study 1), and social norms (study 2). Results are discussed in terms of leveraging policy as a behavioral enactment constraint to control others' but not own environmental behavior.

COVID-19 Peritraumatic Distress and Loneliness in Chinese Residents in North America: The Role of Contraction Worry

The current study examined the association of COVID-19 contraction worry for self and for family members with COVID-19 peritraumatic distress and loneliness in Chinese residents in North America. A sample of 943 Chinese residents (immigrants, citizens, visitors, and international students) in North America completed a cross-sectional online survey during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (between January and February 2021). Univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) models identified possible sociodemographic variables that were included in the subsequent hierarchical regression models. According to the hierarchical regression models, self-contraction worry was significantly associated with both COVID-19 peritraumatic distress (B = −4.340, p < 0.001) and loneliness (B = −0.771, p = 0.006) after controlling for related sociodemographic covariates; however, family-contraction worry was not significantly associated with the outcome variables. Additionally, poorer health status and experienced discrimination significantly predicted higher COVID-19 peritraumatic distress, whereas poorer health status and perceived discrimination significantly predicted increased loneliness. The results highlighted the detrimental impacts of self-contraction worry on peritraumatic distress and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chinese residents in North America.

Exploring the Impacts of Preventative Health Behaviors with Respect to COVID-19: An Altruistic Perspective

This study aims to explore the impact of gender and anxiety on various preventative health behaviors, and the relationships among these preventative health behaviors, individual well-being and depression, from the perspective of altruism. This study employed an online questionnaire survey, and 136 males and 204 females participated in the survey. The results of this study showed that females exhibited better preventative health behaviors than males, including hygiene habits, social distancing and behaviors intended to help others mitigate the epidemic. Anxiety regarding COVID-19 infection encouraged individuals to adopt hygienic habits and social distancing measures rather than to help others mitigate the epidemic. Hygiene habits improved the individual's psychological well-being. Helping others mitigate the epidemic improved the individual's psychological well-being and social well-being and contributed to reducing individual depression. However, the preventative health behavior involved in social distancing was not conducive to emotional well-being or social well-being. Affective elements are related to individual behaviors. Therefore, the use of prosocial, altruistic language may play an important role with respect to encouraging people to comply with preventative health behaviors in the context of COVID-19. In addition, it is worth noting that different preventative health behaviors may have different effects on people's mental health, especially when implementing social distancing-related epidemic mitigation behaviors. The question of how to prevent negative psychological effects in restricted actors must be answered, and the degree of life satisfaction experienced by those actors must also be taken into account.

The Relationships among Anxiety, Subjective Well-Being, Media Consumption, and Safety-Seeking Behaviors during the COVID-19 Epidemic

The COVID-19 epidemic has been confirmed as the largest scale outbreak of atypical pneumonia since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and it has become a public health emergency of international concern. It exacerbated public confusion and anxiety, and the impact of COVID-19 on people needs to be better understood. Indeed, prior studies that conducted meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort research compared mental health before versus during the COVID-19 pandemic and proved that public health polices (e.g., city lockdowns, quarantines, avoiding gatherings, etc.) and COVID-19-related information that circulates on new media platforms directly affected citizen’s mental health and well-being. Hence, this research aims to explore Taiwanese people’s health status, anxiety, media sources for obtaining COVID-19 information, subjective well-being, and safety-seeking behavior during the COVID-19 epidemic and how they are associated. Online surveys were conducted through new media platforms, and 342 responses were included in the analysis. The research results indicate that the participants experienced different aspects of COVID-19 anxiety, including COVID-19 worry and perceived COVID-19 risk. Among the given media sources, the more participants searched for COVID-19 information on new media, the greater they worried about COVID-19. Furthermore, COVID-19 worry was positively related to safety-seeking behavior, while perceived COVID-19 risk was negatively related to subjective well-being. This paper concludes by offering some suggestions for future studies and pointing out limitations of the present study.

How beliefs about weight malleability and risk perceptions for obesity influence parents' information seeking and feeding

This study surveyed 185 parents to determine whether their perceived risk of their child developing obesity and their implicit theories about the malleability of weight independently and/or interactively predict their child-feeding and pursuit of child-related obesity risk information. Higher risk perceptions were associated with healthier feeding intentions and more information seeking. More incremental (malleable) beliefs predicted healthier feeding intentions and greater pursuit of environmental, but not genetic, information. Contrary to hypotheses, the influence of implicit theories and risk perceptions were primarily independent; however, more incremental beliefs predicted less "junk food" feeding among only parents with lower perceived risk.

The Dyadic Health Influence Model

Relationship partners affect one another's health outcomes through their health behaviors, yet how this occurs is not well understood. To fill this gap, we present the Dyadic Health Influence Model (DHIM). The DHIM identifies three routes through which a person (the agent) can impact the health beliefs and behavior of their partner (the target). An agent may (a) model health behaviors and shape the shared environment, (b) enact behaviors that promote their relationship, and/or (c) employ strategies to intentionally influence the target's health behavior. A central premise of the DHIM is that agents act based on their beliefs about their partner's health and their relationship. In turn, their actions have consequences not only for targets' health behavior but also for their relationship. We review theoretical and empirical research that provides initial support for the routes and offer testable predictions at the intersection of health behavior change research and relationship science.

Self-control and beliefs surrounding others’ cooperation predict own health-protective behaviors and support for COVID-19 government regulations: Evidence from two European countries

In the current pandemic, both self-regulated health-protective behavior and government-imposed regulations are needed for successful outbreak mitigation. Going forward, researchers and decision-makers must therefore understand the factors contributing to individuals’ engagement in health-protective behavior, and their support for government regulations. Integrating knowledge from the literatures on self-control and cooperation, we explore an informed selection of potential predictors of individuals’ health-protective behaviors as well as their support for government regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aiming for a conceptual replication in two European countries, we collected data in Switzerland (N = 352) and the UK before (N = 212) and during lockdown (n = 132) and conducted supervised machine learning for variable selection, followed by OLS regression, cross-sectionally and, in the UK sample, across time. Results showed that personal importance of outbreak mitigation and beliefs surrounding others’ cooperation are associated with both health-protective behavior and support for government regulations. Further, Swiss participants high in trait self-control engaged in health-protective behavior more often. Interestingly, perceived risk, age, and political orientation consistently displayed nonsignificant weak to zero associations with both health-protective behavior and support. Together, these findings highlight the contribution of self-control theories in explaining COVID-19-relevant outcomes, and underscore the importance of contextualizing self-control within the cooperative social context.

The psychosocial and clinical concerns of physicians treating patients with COVID-19

Objectives

This study aims to assess the psychosocial and clinical issues affecting physicians who have been directly involved in treating patients with novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Methods

We recruited physicians from four hospitals in Jordan. A structured 20-item, self-administered survey was used to gather data. Descriptive statistics were employed to represent the numbers and percentages of the participants' responses to the survey items. Multivariate logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between the participants’ traits and items related to the level of fear, the quality of care provided to patients, and social distancing among family members.

Results

A total of 135 physicians participated; 65.9% were men. More than half reported moderate to high levels of fear (55.5%). The majority (71.1%) were moderately to highly concerned about becoming infected with COVID-19 from the patients they treated. Most physicians practiced adequate social distancing. While most of them thought that COVID-19 patients received a high quality of care, they generally perceived a shortage of specialised physicians and personal protective equipment (PPE). The ratings for the quality of care and social distancing practices were significantly associated with the presence or absence of training related to COVID-19.

Conclusions

The degree of fear and concerns about COVID-19's impact on physicians and their families was high. There were also concerns about the long-term consequences of COVID-19 on medical services.

Not all worries were created equal: the case of COVID-19 anxiety

Objectives

The objective of this study was to investigate possible differences in COVID-19–related anxiety based on previous theories in social psychology.

Study design

Cross-sectional online questionnaire delivered via the crowdworking platform.

Methods

Four-hundred and seven (120 men and 287 women) adults (aged >18 years) from the United Kingdom answered the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory ‘in light of the COVID-19 situation’, followed by three health and three financial anxiety items.

Results

Our findings imply that women are more anxious than men, people are more anxious about others than about themselves, their anxiety about relatives is higher than about strangers, and anxiety about health is higher than about financial issues.

Conclusions

We suggest that these preliminary findings should be further investigated to help policymakers improve both their treatment of pandemic-related anxiety and their messages.

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Women score higher on COVID-19–related anxiety than men.

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COVID-19–related health concerns are greater than financial concerns.

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People are more concerned about other's health and financial status than their own.

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People are more concerned about the health and financial status of close relatives than that of strangers.