Homeostatic Regulation of Energetic Arousal During Acute Social Isolation: Evidence From the Lab and the Field.

Recent evidence suggests that social contact is a basic need governed by a social homeostatic system. Little is known, however, about how conditions of altered social homeostasis affect human psychology and physiology. Here, we investigated the effects of 8 hr of social isolation on psychological and physiological variables and compared this with 8 hr of food deprivation in a lab experiment (N = 30 adult women). Social isolation led to lowered self-reported energetic arousal and heightened fatigue, comparable with food deprivation. To test whether these findings would extend to a real-life setting, we conducted a preregistered field study during a COVID-19 lockdown (N = 87 adults; 47 women). The drop in energetic arousal after social isolation observed in the lab replicated in the field study for participants who lived alone or reported high sociability, suggesting that lowered energy could be part of a homeostatic response to the lack of social contact.

The listening project: A qualitative study on the experiences of pre-registered nurses during the Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland.

Background: During the COVID 19 pandemic academic institutes worldwide were forced to shift to online or socially distanced learning. Nursing students faced unique challenges due to the limited practical learning environment and removal of supernumerary status to meet increased pressure on health care resources. Aim: To explore the experiences and perceptions of pre-registered nurses in relation to their university education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Underpinned by Lizzio (2006) [1] five senses of student success model, a novel qualitative approach using peer-to-peer discussion was utilized to explore the experiences of pre-registered nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students who were on their second and final year in the nursing program were invited to participate. Interviews were conducted and transcribed using an online meeting platform. Data were analyzed using the five main stages of framework analysis. Results: Eleven peer-to-peer discussion with 22 students were conducted. The five themes were linked with the five senses student success model: capability, connectedness, purpose, resourcefulness, and culture. Six sub-themes emerged in the data: confidence and learning process, building relationships, communication, student as health professional and mental health consequences of COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: Whilst there was strength in university provision, the pandemic was an opportunity for students and academics to reflect and learn about how to further programme resilience and enhance student support processes. We recommend that nursing programmes should include concepts of transition, pandemic preparedness, collaboration with professional partners, and provision of catch-up sessions to analyse gaps on their skills and knowledge.

Early Impacts of College, Interrupted: Considering First-Year Students' Narratives About COVID and Reports of Adjustment During College Shutdowns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened lives and livelihoods, imperiled families and communities, and disrupted developmental milestones globally. Among the critical developmental disruptions experienced is the transition to college, which is common and foundational for personal and social exploration. During college shutdowns (spring 2020), we recruited 633 first-year U.S. students (mean age = 18.83 years, 71.3% cisgender women) to provide narratives about the impacts of the pandemic. We tested the ways narrative features were associated with concurrent and longitudinal COVID stressors, psychosocial adjustment, and identity development. Narrative growth expressed in spring 2020 was positively associated with psychosocial adjustment and global identity development and was negatively associated with mental health concerns. Associations were supported concurrently and at 1-year follow-up. Growth partly explained associations between COVID stressors and students' adjustment. Our findings reinforce the importance of growth for resilience and underscore the importance of connective reasoning as people navigate a chronic stress.

Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort.

Achieving personal growth often requires experiencing discomfort. What if instead of tolerating discomfort (e.g., feeling awkward or uncomfortable), people actively sought it out? Because discomfort is usually experienced immediately and is easy to detect, we suggest that seeking discomfort as a signal of growth can increase motivation. Five experiments (total N = 2,163 adults) tested this prediction across various areas of personal growth: taking improvisation classes to increase self-confidence, engaging in expressive writing to process difficult emotions, becoming informed about the COVID-19 health crisis, opening oneself to opposing political viewpoints, and learning about gun violence. Across these areas of personal development, seeking discomfort as a signal of self-growth motivated engagement and increased perceived goal achievement relative to standard instructions. Consistent with our theorizing, results showed that these effects occurred only in areas of personal growth that cause immediate discomfort.

p Caring About (COVID-19 Related) Social Issues Signals Trustworthiness: Direct and Conceptual Replication of Zlatev (2019)

With three convenient samples (n = 1,087) and one sample representative for the German population in terms of age and gender (n = 210), we replicate research by Zlatev (2019) showing that perceived benevolence-based and perceived integrity-based trustworthiness increase with a target's level of caring about a social issue. We show that these results generalize to various issues ranging from environmental issues (i.e., installation of wind turbines in the North Sea) to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., online teaching to prevent the spread of the virus). Furthermore, we provide initial behavioral evidence for this effect by showing that transfers in a trust game increase with a target's caring about a social issue. All results are robust for age, gender, and social issue. To provide best estimates for the effect of a target's level of caring on perceived trustworthiness, we report results of three mini meta-analyses including our findings as well as the findings of the original research. Policy implications are discussed.

The Benefits of Living With Close Others: A Longitudinal Examination of Mental Health Before and During a Global Stressor.

For better or worse, the people one lives with may exert a powerful influence on one's mental health, perhaps especially during times of stress. The COVID-19 pandemic-a large-scale stressor that prompted health recommendations to stay home to reduce disease spread-provided a unique context for examining how the people who share one's home may shape one's mental health. A seven-wave longitudinal study assessed mental health month to month before and during the pandemic (February through September 2020) in two diverse samples of U.S. adults (N = 656; N = 544). Preregistered analyses demonstrated that people living with close others (children and/or romantic partners) experienced better well-being before and during the pandemic's first 6 months. These groups also experienced unique increases in ill-being during the pandemic's onset, but parents' ill-being also recovered more quickly. These findings highlight the crucial protective function of close relationships for mental health both generally and amid a pandemic.

The Psychological Burden of the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Associated With Antisystemic Attitudes and Political Violence.

What are the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for people's political attitudes and behavior? We tested, specifically, whether the psychological burden of the COVID-19 pandemic relates to antisystemic attitudes (dissatisfaction with the fundamental social and political order), peaceful political activism, and political violence. Nationally representative two-wave panel data were collected via online surveys of adults in the United States, Denmark, Italy, and Hungary (ns = 6,131 and 4,568 in Waves 1 and 2, respectively). Overall, levels of antisystemic attitudes were low, and only a small share of interviewees reported behavioral intentions to participate in and actual participation in political violence. However, preregistered analyses indicated that perceived COVID-19 burden was associated with antisystemic attitudes and intentions to engage in political violence. In the United States, the burden of COVID-19 was also associated with self-reported engagement in violence surrounding the Black Lives Matter protests and counterprotests. We found less robust evidence that perceived COVID-19 burden was associated with peaceful activism.

How Accurate Are Accuracy-Nudge Interventions? A Preregistered Direct Replication of Pennycook et al. (2020).

As part of the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) program, the present study consisted of a two-stage replication test of a central finding by Pennycook et al. (2020), namely that asking people to think about the accuracy of a single headline improves "truth discernment" of intentions to share news headlines about COVID-19. The first stage of the replication test (n = 701) was unsuccessful (p = .67). After collecting a second round of data (additional n = 882, pooled N = 1,583), we found a small but significant interaction between treatment condition and truth discernment (uncorrected p = .017; treatment: d = 0.14, control: d = 0.10). As in the target study, perceived headline accuracy correlated with treatment impact, so that treatment-group participants were less willing to share headlines that were perceived as less accurate. We discuss potential explanations for these findings and an unreported change in the hypothesis (but not the analysis plan) from the preregistration in the original study.

The Emotional Path to Action: Empathy Promotes Physical Distancing and Wearing of Face Masks During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a major challenge to societies all over the globe. Two measures implemented in many countries to curb the spread of the disease are (a) minimizing close contact between people ("physical distancing") and (b) wearing of face masks. In the present research, we tested the idea that physical distancing and wearing of face masks can be the result of a prosocial emotional process-empathy for people most vulnerable to the virus. In four preregistered studies (N = 3,718, Western population), we found that (a) empathy indeed relates to the motivation to adhere to physical distancing and to wearing face masks and (b) inducing empathy for people most vulnerable to the virus promotes the motivation to adhere to these measures (whereas merely providing information about the importance of the measures does not). In sum, the present research provides a better understanding of the factors underlying the willingness to follow two important measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using Machine Learning to Generate Novel Hypotheses: Increasing Optimism About COVID-19 Makes People Less Willing to Justify Unethical Behaviors.

How can we nudge people to not engage in unethical behaviors, such as hoarding and violating social-distancing guidelines, during the COVID-19 pandemic? Because past research on antecedents of unethical behavior has not provided a clear answer, we turned to machine learning to generate novel hypotheses. We trained a deep-learning model to predict whether or not World Values Survey respondents perceived unethical behaviors as justifiable, on the basis of their responses to 708 other items. The model identified optimism about the future of humanity as one of the top predictors of unethicality. A preregistered correlational study (N = 218 U.S. residents) conceptually replicated this finding. A preregistered experiment (N = 294 U.S. residents) provided causal support: Participants who read a scenario conveying optimism about the COVID-19 pandemic were less willing to justify hoarding and violating social-distancing guidelines than participants who read a scenario conveying pessimism. The findings suggest that optimism can help reduce unethicality, and they document the utility of machine-learning methods for generating novel hypotheses.

Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention.

Across two studies with more than 1,700 U.S. adults recruited online, we present evidence that people share false claims about COVID-19 partly because they simply fail to think sufficiently about whether or not the content is accurate when deciding what to share. In Study 1, participants were far worse at discerning between true and false content when deciding what they would share on social media relative to when they were asked directly about accuracy. Furthermore, greater cognitive reflection and science knowledge were associated with stronger discernment. In Study 2, we found that a simple accuracy reminder at the beginning of the study (i.e., judging the accuracy of a non-COVID-19-related headline) nearly tripled the level of truth discernment in participants' subsequent sharing intentions. Our results, which mirror those found previously for political fake news, suggest that nudging people to think about accuracy is a simple way to improve choices about what to share on social media.