Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak was labeled a global pandemic by the WHO in March of 2020. During that same month, the number of confirmed cases and the death rate grew exponentially in the United States, creating a serious public-health emergency. Unfortunately, many Americans dismissed the pandemic as a hoax and failed to properly engage in helpful behaviors like social-distancing and increased hand-washing. Here, we examine a disposition—engagement in analytic-thinking—that might predict beliefs that the pandemic is a hoax and failures to change behavior in positive ways during that critical early period in March. Our results indicate that individuals less likely to engage effortful, deliberative, and reflective cognitive processes were more likely to believe the pandemic was a hoax and less likely to have recently engaged in social-distancing and hand-washing in March. We discuss possible implications of these results for understanding and addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

摘要

2020 年 3 月，世卫组织将 COVID-19 疫情列为全球大流行。同月，美国确诊病例数和死亡率呈指数级增长，造成严重的公共卫生紧急情况。不幸的是，许多美国人认为这种流行病是一场骗局，未能正确地进行有益的行为，例如保持社交距离和增加洗手。在这里，我们研究了一种倾向——参与分析思维——这可能预示着这种流行病是一场骗局，以及在 3 月那个关键的早期阶段未能以积极的方式改变行为的信念。我们的结果表明，个人不太可能进行努力、深思熟虑、反思性认知过程更有可能相信大流行是一场骗局，并且最近不太可能在 3 月份进行社交疏远和洗手。我们讨论了这些结果对理解和解决 COVID-19 大流行的可能影响。