We use a concepts and categories research perspective to explore how prior conceptual knowledge influences thinking about a novel disease, namely COVID-19. We collected measures of how similar people thought COVID-19 was to several existing concepts that may have served as other possible comparison points for the pandemic. We also collected participants’ self-reported engagement in pandemic-related behaviors. We found that thinking the COVID-19 pandemic was similar to other serious disease outbreaks predicted greater social distancing and mask-wearing, whereas likening COVID-19 to the seasonal flu predicted engaging in significantly fewer of these behaviors. Thinking of COVID-19 as similar to zombie apocalypse scenarios or moments of major societal upheaval predicted stocking-up behaviors, but not disease mitigation behaviors. These early category comparisons influenced behaviors over a six-month span of longitudinal data collection. Our findings suggest that early conceptual comparisons track with emergent disease categories over time and influence the behaviors people engage in related to the disease. Our research illustrates how early concept formation influences behaviors over time, and suggests ways for public health experts to communicate with the public about emergent diseases.

中文翻译：

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大流行和僵尸：先验概念对COVID-19大流行相关行为的影响

我们使用概念和类别研究的观点来探讨先前的概念知识如何影响对新型疾病即COVID-19的思考。我们收集了一些类似的人如何将COVID-19与几个现有概念相比较的方法，这些概念可能已经成为大流行的其他可能比较点。我们还收集了参与者对大流行相关行为的自我报告参与。我们发现，认为COVID-19大流行与其他严重疾病暴发相似，预示着更大的社会距离和戴口罩，而将COVID-19与季节性流感相提并论，则表明参与这些行为的人数明显减少。将COVID-19视为类似于僵尸末日场景或主要社会动荡时刻预测的积蓄行为，而不是缓解疾病的行为。这些早期的类别比较影响了纵向数据收集六个月范围内的行为。我们的发现表明，随着时间的推移，早期的概念比较会追踪新兴疾病的类别，并影响人们与该疾病相关的行为。我们的研究说明了早期概念的形成如何随着时间的推移影响行为，并提出了公共卫生专家就突发疾病与公众进行交流的方法。