Family support during childhood as a predictor of mate retention and kin care in adults during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil: an exploratory study

Introduction

Experiences during development help to explain behavior expression in adulthood.

Aims

In this study, we explored how unpredictability and harshness experienced during childhood may have impacted the occurrence of reproductive milestones in adulthood and the expression of fundamental motives related to self-protection, disease avoidance, mate seeking, mate retention, and kin care (children/family) during the pandemic.

Methods

This was an exploratory study with 438 participants. Through the administration of online questionnaires, participants were assessed and categorized based on their childhood experiences, resulting in three groups: low unpredictability, high unpredictability with family support, and high unpredictability without family support.

Results

We found that family support experienced during childhood predicts a slow life-history strategy. This involves an emphasis on growth and parenting efforts at the expense reproduction and was relevant even for participants who faced financial unpredictability. During the pandemic, we also observed that mate retention and kin care (family) motives were predominant among individuals who had greater family support during childhood.

Discussion

Overall, the findings suggest that unpredictability experienced during childhood is crucial for the development of life-history strategies and the manifestation of fundamental motives in adulthood.

What Motives Do People Most Want to Know About When Meeting Another Person? An Investigation Into Prioritization of Information About Seven Fundamental Motives

What information about a person's personality do people want to know? Prior research has focused on behavioral traits, but personality is also characterized in terms of motives. Four studies (N = 1,502) assessed participants' interest in information about seven fundamental social motives (self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate seeking, mate retention, kin care) across 12 experimental conditions that presented details about the person or situation. In the absence of details about specific situations, participants most highly prioritized learning about kin care and mate retention motives. There was some variability across conditions, but the kin care motive was consistently highly prioritized. Additional results from Studies 1 to 4 and Study 5 (N = 174) showed the most highly prioritized motives were perceived to be stable across time and to be especially diagnostic of a person's trustworthiness, warmth, competence, and dependability. Findings are discussed in relation to research on fundamental social motives and pragmatic perspectives on person perception.

COVID-19 symptoms and compliance: The mediating role of fundamental social motives

Background

Understanding the compliance of infected individuals and the psychological process underlying compliance during pandemics is important for preventing and controlling the spread of pathogens. Our study investigated whether fundamental social motives mediate the relationship between having infectious disease and compliance.

Methods

An online survey was conducted in March 2020, during the severe phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in China to collect data from 15,758 participants. The survey comprised self-report questionnaires with items pertaining to current symptoms (COVID-19 symptoms, other symptoms or no symptoms), the Fundamental Social Motive Inventory, and measures of compliance. Correlation analysis, linear regression analysis, and structural equation model were used for data analysis.

Results

The participants with COVID-19 symptoms had lower levels of compliance than those without symptoms, and their lower compliance was caused by a decrease in disease avoidance (indirect effect = -0.058, 95% CI = [-0.061, -0.056]) and familial motives (indirect effect = -0.113, 95% CI = [-0.116, -0.062]). Whereas exclusion concern (indirect effect = 0.014, 95% CI = [0.011, 0.017]) suppressed the effects of COVID-19 symptoms on compliance, the effect disappeared in the multiple mediation model, while those of disease avoidance and familial motives remained.

Conclusion

Our findings emphasize the critical role of disease avoidance and familial motives in promoting compliance with public health norms during pandemics and suggest that enhancing these motives may serve as an effective intervention strategy to mitigate noncompliance among potentially infected individuals.