School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Van Munching Hall, 7699 Mowatt Ln, College Park, MD, 20740, USA.
Inter-American Development Bank, 1300 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20577, USA.
BMC Public Health. 2022 May 18;22(1):1009. doi: 10.1186/s12889-022-13311-9.
Procrastination and lack of attention may often hinder the implementation of preemptive actions necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 like washing hands, covering nose and mouth with a mask, and keeping social distance. It is in such "easy" tasks that people (mistakenly) believe that they are better than others. In this paper we test for overconfidence bias in COVID-19 preventive behaviors in Latin America.
Using a phone survey in nationally representative samples from 10 Latin American countries where randomly, half of the sample in each country was asked about self-reported compliance to COVID-19 guidelines, and half about preventive behavior of fellow citizens compared to them; we tested: if the proportion of individuals claiming that others comply with a certain measure "Always more frequent than me" is higher than those stating that they "Never" or "Sometimes" comply with the same measure (i.e. people believe they are better at doing something than what they actually are).
Over 90% of Latin-Americans claim to always wear a mask and sanitize their hands and more than 80% state to always keep social distance. We also find evidence of overconfidence in every behavior - except for keeping distance in public transportation. Moreover, the magnitude of such overconfidence is higher for behaviors such as wearing masks in public or washing hands than for those regarding keeping the 2-m distance.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to measure overconfidence in COVID-19 preventive behaviors in Latin America. Results show that more effort is needed to encourage people to comply with the regulation when it does not only depend on them: a better organization of closed stores and public transportation are, for instance, crucial to allow social distancing. It also suggests that a reinforcement of basic measures is essential, as individuals report to be performing them more frequently than when they have to think about such behaviors compared to others.
拖延和注意力不集中可能经常会阻碍实施预防 COVID-19 传播的先发制人行动，例如洗手、戴口罩捂住口鼻以及保持社交距离。在这些“简单”的任务中，人们（错误地）认为自己比别人做得更好。在本文中，我们测试了拉丁美洲 COVID-19 预防行为中的过度自信偏见。
我们在 10 个拉丁美洲国家进行了一项电话调查，在每个国家的样本中，随机抽取一半的样本询问他们对 COVID-19 指南的自我报告遵守情况，另一半则询问他们与同胞相比的预防行为；我们测试了以下内容：如果声称他人遵守某项措施“总是比我更频繁”的比例高于那些表示他们“从不”或“有时”遵守同一措施的比例（即人们认为自己在做某事方面比实际情况更好），那么人们是否存在过度自信。
超过 90%的拉丁美洲人声称他们总是戴口罩和洗手，超过 80%的人表示他们总是保持社交距离。我们还发现，每种行为都存在过度自信的证据——除了在公共交通工具上保持距离。此外，与保持 2 米距离相比，在公共场所戴口罩或洗手等行为的过度自信程度更高。
据我们所知，这是首次在拉丁美洲测量 COVID-19 预防行为中的过度自信的研究。结果表明，需要付出更多努力来鼓励人们遵守规定，因为这不仅取决于他们个人：例如，更好地组织关闭的商店和公共交通工具对于允许社交距离至关重要。这也表明，必须加强基本措施，因为个人报告说，他们比在与他人比较时更频繁地执行这些措施。
