People’s politics and values have a greater impact on the level of risk they feel from COVID-19 compared to objective indicators such as the number of cases diagnosed.
That is the new study by the University of Cambridge that measured how perceptions of the coronavirus have varied over 10 months of pandemic for more than 6,000 UK residents.
Published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of risk analysis, the results show that, through 2020, the perception of UK residents about the risk from COVID-19 moved up and down as the pandemic declined and declined.
However, what was consistent was that beliefs and other psychological factors – rather than numbers of factors – had the greatest impact on perceived risk, which was itself related to people’s willingness to accept. to protective health behaviors.
People with a lower understanding of the risk of the virus included:
- more political or conservative individuals
- those who thought the government should ban less.
However, COVID-19 had a lower understanding of people with higher trust in government and more confidence in the country’s actions to limit its spread.
People with a higher understanding of the virus included:
- those who place more emphasis on doing things for the benefit of others and society
- people who have more confidence in how an individual ‘s actions can limit their distribution
- citizens who have a higher confidence in scientists and medical professionals
On average, women were more anxious. Naturally, those who claimed to have known the virus were more concerned about its risks as well.
Of these factors, the three most important conclusions were the extent to which people believed that government should intervene in society, their feelings of personal ability to stop spreading, and the tendency to do things for the benefit of others. There was confidence in science in the fourth and fifth genders.
Lead researchers Dr Claudia R. Schneider and Professor Sander van der Linden say the findings should influence how the UK public is consulted about the risk of coronavirus.
“While risk communicators may be attracted to try to better understand the risk of COVID-19 as a way to build more protective behaviors in the population, we warn that populations are not as intimidating as There is a danger in feeling and changes over time – public perception can overestimate or underestimate the real danger at different times, “says Dr Schneider. from the Winton Center for Risk and Evidence Communication, explains.
“Risk communicators can benefit from these insights into the key drivers of people’s psychological reactions to the pandemic in developing risk communication strategies. “
The team in Cambridge surveyed UK residents about their perception of the virus and the health protection measures they took, such as wearing face masks or social distance.
The samples, taken in March, May, July and September 2020, and January 2021, were balanced by age, gender and ethnicity.
The researchers found that while risk attitudes changed over time, there was a consistent and positive association with the adoption of health protection behaviors.
Such behavior increased between March 2020 and January 2021, and the link between risk awareness and behavior was stronger in January 2021 than in March and May 2020.
Professor van der Linden, Director of the Cambridge Social Decision Making Laboratory, said: “Our findings show that human values, global perspectives and a sense of personal effectiveness, play a greater role in risk awareness. compared to more ‘objective’ and cognitive factors, such as personal experience and COVID-19 case reports. Importantly, these decisions remain strong over time for the UK. “
The limitations of the study include not being able to assess whether a risk perception directs behavior or vice versa (or both) due to the correlational nature of the studies, and the team did not investigate -again on the same people.
The authors stress the importance of future research to paint a fuller picture of why some people take public health advice and others do not help. designing evidence-based communication strategies.