New preprint posted on PsyArXiv about the relationship between financial constraint and people’s beliefs about their personal risk and national spread of COVID-19:
In early March 2020, two crises quickly 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 impacts of financial constraint on perceptions of disease spread and subsequent actions is not well understood. 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. The strength of the effect of financial constraint equals or eclipses the influence of partisanship on beliefs and is much larger than that of 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 is spilling over into people’s beliefs about the health crisis and their behaviors. Correspondingly, variables related to the economic crisis created by COVID-19 can be used to predict both people’s beliefs about the health crisis as well as relevant behaviors.
Computational Decision Making Lab 