The dark side of belief in Covid-19 scientists and scientific evidence.

We draw from an interdisciplinary literature on convictions to examine the manifestations and consequences of firmly held beliefs in Covid-19 (C19) science. Across three studies (N = 743), we assess participants' beliefs in C19 experts, and beliefs in supported and unsupported empirical evidence. Study 1 establishes the basic theoretical links and we show that an individual's belief in science on C19 is associated with dispositional belief in science and moralization of C19 mitigation measures. Our subsequent two studies show how stronger belief in C19 science influences distrust in unmasked individuals past the mandates, and greater endorsement of pandemic mitigation authoritarianism. We document the dark side that emerges when belief in C19 science extends beyond the generally desirable scientific literacy and manifests as a conviction that public health experts are the only ones who can handle the pandemic, and that even unsupported claims about C19 are supported by scientific evidence (e.g., risk of outdoor transmission is high). We also highlight our political ideology findings showing that both liberals and conservatives mis-calibrate C19 risks in different ways, and we conclude with discussing how examining the darker side of scientific beliefs can inform our understanding of people's reactions to the pandemic.

Five Steps Towards Avoiding Narrative Traps in Decision-Making.

Narratives provide simple rules about how we ought to live and what our priorities ought to be. They are especially appealing in times of high uncertainty. Using the uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 as an illustration, we show how a narrative to preserve life has become dominant, and we illustrate how it has been reinforced by several behavioural biases. We argue that being able to identify and critically evaluate the impact of dominant narratives is vital to ensuring optimal decision-making. To facilitate this, we offer five recommendations-the ABCDE of decision-making-that can help to reduce the "narrative trap" in decision-making in any uncertain environment.

You Must Stay at Home! The Impact of Commands on Behaviors During COVID-19

You must stay at home! This is how the UK Prime Minister announced lockdown in March 2020. Many countries implemented similarly assertive messages. Research, however, suggests that authoritative language can backfire by inciting psychological reactance (i.e., feelings of anger arising from threats to one's autonomy). In a series of three studies, we therefore tested whether commanding versus control and noncommanding messages influence several cognitive and affective indicators of reactance, intentions to comply with COVID-19 recommendations, and the compliance behavior itself. Although people found commanding messages threatening and felt angry and negative toward them, these messages impacted only intentions, but there was no evidence of behavioral reactance. Overall, our research constitutes the most comprehensive examination of cognitive?affective and behavioral indicators of reactance regarding commands to date and offers new insights into both reactance theory and COVID-19 communication.

Wellbeing Costs of COVID-19 in the UK

From the Executive Summary: The COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] health pandemic is having a major impact on our lives. Very little is known, however, about the effects of the policy responses on people's wellbeing. We estimate the wellbeing costs of COVID-19 and social distancing measures by looking at the impacts of the pandemic on the mental health and wellbeing of people in the UK between 9 and 19 April 2020 using a large survey with nationally representative quotas.COVID-19 (Disease);Epidemics;Public health