Japanese society and psychology during the COVID-19 pandemic: Study based on a survey in late March 2020

The purpose of this study was to investigate the cognitions, behaviors, attitudes, and living conditions of Japanese people during the severe novel coronavirus pandemic that reached the country in January 2020 and to publish the data related to the study. Using experiential data gathered from 612 Japanese nationals in late March 2020, we conducted an exploratory analysis of the associations between the variables measured in order to capture an authentic portrait of a society grappling with an infectious disease. We found that infection preventive behaviors and exclusionary attitudes toward foreigners were associated with individual differences in the cognitive responses specific to infectious diseases and pathogen avoidance. In variables directly related to the pandemic, there were some differences by gender, but not by generation or area of residence. This study provides practical, essential in formation that could give academic researchers, policymakers, and social support agencies valuable insights into the social pathologies specific to infectious diseases, managing public health, and improving lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Person and situation effects in predicting outgroup prejudice and avoidance during the COVID-19 pandemic

Recent theories of intergroup relations suggest that factors relevant to disease, disgust, and contagion predict prejudice towards ethnic outgroups. The current research explored the influence of contextual pathogen threat and individual differences in threat sensitivity on outgroup prejudice and avoidance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from a sample of British adults in June 2020 (N = 524). A multi-level approach was employed to capture differences in confirmed COVID-19 cases across different regions in the UK. Results demonstrated that even in a "strong" pandemic context, individual differences in both disgust sensitivity (DS) and intergroup disgust sensitivity (ITG-DS) explained variability in outgroup distancing. Subjective perceptions of contextual pathogen prevalence, but not actual infection rates, also predicted greater outgroup avoidance. However, a significant cross-level interaction revealed that DS predicted outgroup distancing in regions with higher numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases, but not in areas of lower infection. Thus, individual differences in pathogen avoidance may be especially influential under high situational pathogen stress. There was also some evidence that pathogen threat also predicted greater ingroup attraction. Results provide important insights into factors that promote or inhibit positive intergroup relations during pandemics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Effects of Pathogen-Avoidance Tendency on Infection-Prevention Behaviors and Exclusionary Attitudes toward Foreigners: A Longitudinal Study of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Japan.

This study investigated the changes in public behaviors and attitudes following the spread of COVID-19 in Japan. Using a longitudinal approach that analyzes the movement of an unpredictable and real infection threat to explain and predict human behavior during the pandemic-a novel approach in behavioral immune system research-a panel survey was conducted on Japanese citizens. The results of the survey, conducted in late January, mid-February, and early March 2020, indicated that the influence of the interaction between the changes in situational infection threat and individual differences in pathogen-avoidance tendency on infection-prevention behaviors and exclusionary attitudes toward foreigners was not significant. Moreover, frequent contact with foreigners had a mitigating effect on exclusionary attitudes. The study thus provided a valuable contribution to the application of behavioral immune-system responses to problems associated with infection threats. Moreover, consideration of the aspects of adaptive reaction and social learning allowed us to observe the process of adaptive strategies in novel environments under conditions of high ecological validity and to accurately understand the psychological response to infectious disease outbreaks.

Disgust sensitivity predicts sociosexuality across cultures

Restricted sociosexuality has been linked to sexual disgust, suggesting that decreasing sexual behavior may be a pathogen avoidance technique. Using the behavioral immune system framework, which posits that humans experience disgust after exposure to pathogen cues, we replicate and expand on previous studies by analyzing the influence of three domains of disgust (sexual, moral, pathogen) on psychological (desire and attitude) and behavioral domains of sociosexuality (SOI) in four diverse samples: American university students (n = 155), Salvadoran community members (n = 98), a global online sample (n = 359), and a four-country online sample (US, India, Italy, and Brazil;n = 822) collected during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In contrast with previous studies, we account for shared variance in sexual, pathogen, and moral disgust by entering all three in a multiple regression to predict composite SOI. In both large samples, sexual disgust and pathogen disgust had opposing effects on composite SOI;that is, higher sexual disgust and lower pathogen disgust were associated with more restricted composite SOI. Additionally, we constructed a multi-group structural equation model (SEM) to determine the impact of each domain of disgust on each domain of SOI across all our samples simultaneously, while controlling for age and sex. Within this model we also assessed how the psychological domains of SOI – attitude and desire – mediate the relationship between disgust and sociosexual behavior. Pathogen disgust positively predicted SOI attitude and desire, but not behavior, consistently across all groups. SOI behavior was only predicted by pathogen disgust when mediated by SOI attitude, again across all groups, suggesting that behavior seems to be driven largely by the psychological facets of SOI. We discuss these findings in light of the behavioral immune system and the bet-hedging hypothesis, which make opposing predictions on the relationship between infection risk and sexual behavior.

The Behavioral Immune System and Intergroup Bias: Evidence for Asian-Specific Bias at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Pathogen avoidance has been linked to biases against various groups of people, including ethnic outgroups. The present research explored how a non-hypothetical pathogen threat associated with a specific foreign ecology may differentially prompt biases against different ethnic groups. Two studies used an experimental design to examine how the salience of the COVID-19 threat (in early 2020, before COVID-19 was labeled a pandemic) affected perceptions of targets from different racial groups. Study 1 (N = 375; Prime Panels) found that participants in the COVID-19 threat condition, compared to those in the non-pathogen threat condition, perceived all social targets to be more contagious, with the effect being stronger for Asian targets relative to Latino, Black, and White targets. Study 2 (N = 167; undergraduate sample) found that participants in the COVID-19 threat condition, compared to those in the non-pathogen threat condition, were more likely to categorize Asian (but not Latino, Black, or White) targets as outgroup members in a modified minimal group paradigm. Data suggest that the patterns of biases prompted by pathogen avoidance may dynamically change depending on salient heuristic associations. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40806-022-00321-4.

Reductions in perceived COVID-19 threat amid UK's mass public vaccination programme coincide with reductions in outgroup avoidance (but not prejudice).

It has long been proposed that perceptions of threat contribute to greater outgroup negativity. Much of the existing evidence on the threat-prejudice association in the real world, however, is cross-sectional in nature. Such designs do not adequately capture individual-level changes in constructs, and how changes in constructs relate to changes in other theoretically relevant constructs. The current research exploited the unique opportunity afforded by the mass COVID-19 vaccination programme in the United Kingdom to explore whether reductions in pathogen threat coincide with reductions in outgroup prejudice and avoidance. A two-wave longitudinal study (N1  = 912, N2  = 738) measured British adult's perceptions of COVID-19 threat and anti-immigrant bias before and during mass vaccine rollout in the United Kingdom. Tests of latent change models demonstrated that perceived COVID-19 threat significantly declined as the vaccine programme progressed, as did measures of outgroup avoidance tendencies, but not prejudiced attitudes. Critically, change in threat was systematically correlated with change in outgroup avoidance: those with greater reductions in perceived COVID-19 threat were, on average, those with greater reductions in outgroup avoidance. Findings provide important and novel insights into the implications of disease protection strategies for intergroup relations during an actual pandemic context, as it unfolds over time.

Japanese society and psychology during the COVID-19 pandemic: Study based on a survey in late March 2020

The purpose of this study was to investigate the cognitions, behaviors, attitudes, and living conditions of Japanese people during the severe novel coronavirus pandemic that reached the country in January 2020 and to publish the data related to the study. Using experiential data gathered from 612 Japanese nationals in late March 2020, we conducted an exploratory analysis of the associations between the variables measured in order to capture an authentic portrait of a society grappling with an infectious disease. We found that infection preventive behaviors and exclusionary attitudes toward foreigners were associated with individual differences in the cognitive responses specific to infectious diseases and pathogen avoidance. In variables directly related to the pandemic, there were some differences by gender, but not by generation or area of residence. This study provides practical, essential information that could give academic researchers, policymakers, and social support agencies valuable insights into the social pathologies specific to infectious diseases, managing public health, and improving lives. © 2021 Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.

Why Do People (Not) Engage in Social Distancing? Proximate and Ultimate Analyses of Norm-Following During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID-19 has had a profound negative effect on many aspects of human life. While pharmacological solutions are being developed and implemented, the onus of mitigating the impact of the virus falls, in part, on individual citizens and their adherence to public health guidelines. However, promoting adherence to these guidelines has proven challenging. There is a pressing need to understand the factors that influence people's adherence to these guidelines in order to improve public compliance. To this end, the current study investigated whether people's perceptions of others' adherence predict their own adherence. We also investigated whether any influence of perceived social norms was mediated by perceptions of the moral wrongness of non-adherence, anticipated shame for non-adherence, or perceptions of disease severity. One hundred fifty-two Australians participated in our study between June 6, 2020 and August 21, 2020. Findings from this preliminary investigation suggest that (1) people match their behavior to perceived social norms, and (2) this is driven, at least in part, by people using others' behavior as a cue to the severity of disease threat. Such findings provide insight into the proximate and ultimate bases of norm-following behavior, and shed preliminary light on public health-related behavior in the context of a pandemic. Although further research is needed, the results of this study-which suggest that people use others' behavior as a cue to how serious the pandemic is and as a guide for their own behavior-could have important implications for public health organizations, social movements, and political leaders and the role they play in the fight against epidemics and pandemics.

Disease and Disapproval: COVID-19 Concern is Related to Greater Moral Condemnation.

Prior research has indicated that disease threat and disgust are associated with harsher moral condemnation. We investigated the role of a specific, highly salient health concern, namely the spread of the coronavirus, and associated COVID-19 disease, on moral disapproval. We hypothesized that individuals who report greater subjective worry about COVID-19 would be more sensitive to moral transgressions. Across three studies (N = 913), conducted March-May 2020 as the pandemic started to unfold in the United States, we found that individuals who were worried about contracting the infectious disease made harsher moral judgments than those who were relatively less worried. This effect was not restricted to transgressions involving purity, but extended to transgressions involving harm, fairness, authority, and loyalty, and remained when controlling for political orientation. Furthermore, for Studies 1 and 2 the effect also was robust when taking into account the contamination subscale of the Disgust Scale-Revised. These findings add to the growing literature that concrete threats to health can play a role in abstract moral considerations, supporting the notion that judgments of wrongdoing are not based on rational thought alone.

Keep your (social) distance: Pathogen concerns and social perception in the time of COVID-19.

Previous research suggests that individual differences in pathogen disgust sensitivity and social anxiety predict avoidance behavior, especially of pathogen cues, and reduced tolerance for social ambiguity. Conversely, generalized social trust is associated with approach behavior and a greater tolerance for social ambiguity. We conducted an online study (N = 1078) to test these predictions in the context of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Specifically, we assessed whether individual differences in pathogen disgust sensitivity, social anxiety and generalized social trust predicted judgments of trustworthiness, desired social distance and perceptions of sickness of target faces wearing surgical masks. Our results showed that (a) high sensitivity to pathogen disgust predicted lower judgments of trustworthiness and lower social desirability; (b) high social anxiety predicted higher perceptions of illness and lower judgments of trustworthiness; and (c) generalized social trust predicted higher judgments of trustworthiness and lower perceptions of illness of target faces. Further, we found that mask wearers were perceived as more likely to be ill, more trustworthy and more socially desirable than the same faces presented to a control group, without the surgical mask superimposed. Results are discussed in terms of perceived compliance with an emerging social norm overriding the intrinsic untrustworthiness of masked faces.