Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Sci Rep. 2023 Mar 1;13(1):3432. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-30118-9.
In early March 2020, two crises emerged: the COVID-19 public health crisis and a corresponding economic crisis resulting from business closures and skyrocketing job losses. While the link between socioeconomic status and infectious disease is well-documented, the psychological relationships among economic considerations, such as financial constraint and economic anxiety, and health considerations, such as perceptions of disease spread and preventative actions, is not well understood. Despite past research illustrating the strong link between financial fragility and a wide range of behaviors, surprisingly little research has examined the psychological relationship between the economic crisis and beliefs and behaviors related to the co-occurring health crisis. We show that financial constraint predicts people's beliefs about both their personal risk of infection and the national spread of the virus as well as their social distancing behavior. In addition, we compare the predictive utility of financial constraint to two other commonly studied factors: political partisanship and local disease severity. We also show that negative affect partially mediates the relationship between financial constraint and COVID-19 beliefs and social distancing behaviors. These results suggest the economic crisis created by COVID-19 spilled over into people's beliefs about the health crisis and their behaviors.
2020 年 3 月初，出现了两个危机：COVID-19 公共卫生危机和因企业关闭以及失业率飙升而导致的相应经济危机。虽然社会经济地位与传染病之间的联系已有充分记录，但经济因素（如财务限制和经济焦虑）与健康因素（如对疾病传播和预防措施的看法）之间的心理关系尚不清楚。尽管过去的研究表明金融脆弱性与广泛的行为之间存在很强的联系，但令人惊讶的是，很少有研究考察经济危机与与同时发生的健康危机相关的信念和行为之间的心理关系。我们表明，财务限制预测了人们对个人感染风险和病毒在全国传播的看法，以及他们的社交距离行为。此外，我们将财务限制的预测效用与另外两个常见的研究因素进行了比较：政治党派和当地疾病严重程度。我们还表明，消极情绪部分中介了财务限制与 COVID-19 信念和社交距离行为之间的关系。这些结果表明，COVID-19 引发的经济危机蔓延到了人们对健康危机的看法和行为上。
