Troisi Alfonso, Carola Valeria, Nanni Roberta Croce
International Medical School, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.
Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
Clin Neuropsychiatry. 2023 Aug;20(4):337-341. doi: 10.36131/cnfioritieditore20230413.
The COVID-19 pandemic has offered a unique opportunity to test evolutionary hypotheses on the functionality of the behavioral immune system. The aim of the present study was to ascertain if a previous infection with COVID-19 was associated with increased levels of perceived infectability and germ aversion. Based on the calibration hypothesis, we predicted that the activation of the behavioral immune system was greater in those participants who had been infected compared to those who reported no previous COVID-19 infection.
The sample included 2072 participants who completed an online survey between March 1 and April 10, 2022 when the Italian population was facing the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. To measure the activation of the behavioral immune system, we used the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease (PVD) scale.
Perceived infectability was significantly greater in those participants who had been infected compared to those who reported no previous COVID-19 infection but there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of germ aversion. Overall, our findings suggest that individual differences in the activation of the behavioral immune system were marginally affected by a personal history of COVID-19 infection. A possible explanation is that the environmental sensitivity of the behavioral immune system is tuned more on chronic disease threat (i.e., ecologies with higher pathogen load) than on situational disease threat (e.g., a pandemic or disease outbreak like the COVID-19 pandemic).
新冠疫情提供了一个独特的机会来检验关于行为免疫系统功能的进化假说。本研究的目的是确定既往感染新冠病毒是否与感知易感性和对病菌的厌恶程度增加有关。基于校准假说，我们预测，与那些报告无新冠病毒既往感染的参与者相比，曾感染新冠病毒的参与者的行为免疫系统激活程度更高。
样本包括2072名参与者，他们于2022年3月1日至4月10日期间完成了一项在线调查，当时意大利民众正面临新冠疫情的第三波冲击。为了测量行为免疫系统的激活程度，我们使用了疾病感知易感性（PVD）量表。
与那些报告无新冠病毒既往感染的参与者相比，曾感染新冠病毒的参与者的感知易感性显著更高，但两组在对病菌的厌恶方面没有显著差异。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，行为免疫系统激活的个体差异受到新冠病毒既往感染史的影响较小。一种可能的解释是，行为免疫系统的环境敏感性更多地取决于慢性疾病威胁（即病原体负荷较高的生态环境），而非情境性疾病威胁（例如大流行或像新冠疫情这样的疾病爆发）。
