Harvey Nigel
Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2020 Nov 5;11:589892. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.589892. eCollection 2020.
In some countries, government policies to combat Covid-19 have been based on the notion that behavioral fatigue prevents people maintaining self-isolation and other restrictions to their life styles for more than a short time. By 16 March 2020, 681 United Kingdom behavioral scientists had signed an open letter to their government asking it to reveal the evidence that shows that behavioral fatigue exists. Nothing was forthcoming. The provenance of concept remains a mystery but modelers have argued that the delay in implementing lockdown policies, for which it was at least partly responsible, led to the loss of at least 20,000 lives. Here, I consider whether behavioral fatigue is a real phenomenon by assessing (a) direct evidence consistent and inconsistent with its existence and (b) indirect evidence drawn from other domains. I conclude that evidence for it is not sufficient to constrain policy. It is reasonable to conclude that behavioral fatigue is either a naïve construct or a myth that arose during the development of policy designed to tackle the Covid-19 crisis.
在一些国家，政府抗击新冠疫情的政策基于这样一种观念，即行为疲劳会使人们无法长时间维持自我隔离以及对生活方式的其他限制。到2020年3月16日，681名英国行为科学家联名致信政府，要求其公布表明行为疲劳存在的证据。但毫无回应。这个概念的出处仍是个谜，但建模者认为，至少部分导致实施封锁政策延迟的原因是行为疲劳，这致使至少2万人丧生。在此，我通过评估（a）与其存在相符和不符的直接证据，以及（b）从其他领域得出的间接证据，来考量行为疲劳是否是一种真实现象。我的结论是，支持它的证据不足以指导政策制定。有理由得出这样的结论：行为疲劳要么是一个幼稚的概念，要么是在制定应对新冠危机的政策过程中产生的一个谬论。
