ABSTRACT
This study examines whether the psychological tendencies during the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) pandemic differed from that in normal times based on Web-based survey data from two different samples. The target of the analysis was the tendency to avoid infection. In doing so, we considered the house effects of the different survey media and attempted to compensate for them by inverse probability weighted estimation using propensity scores calculated with several covariates. The results showed that even after adjustment, infection avoidance tendencies were higher during the pandemic than normal times. We discussed the significance of adjusting for house effects in the Web-based survey and some of the limitations of this study. © 2022 Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
We animals have evolved a variety of mechanisms to avoid conspecifics who might be infected. It is currently unclear whether and why this "behavioral immune system" targets unfamiliar individuals more than familiar ones. Here I answer this question in humans, using publicly available data of a recent study on 1969 participants from India and 1615 from the USA. The apparent health of a male stranger, as estimated from his face, and the comfort with contact with him were a direct function of his similarity to the men in the local community. This held true regardless of whether the face carried overt signs of infection. I conclude that our behavioral immune system is finely tuned to degrees of outgroupness - and that cues of outgroupness are partly processed as cues of infectiousness. These findings, which were consistent across the two cultures, support the notion that the pathogens of strangers are perceived as more dangerous.