Use our live data to follow the battle against the pandemic

Tracking covid-19 across the world

Grant Shapps says work has started on app many people already use to book GP appointments

NHS app will be used as Covid ‘vaccine passport’ for foreign travel

13/ It's important for government institutions and public health officials to show themselves to be trustworthy... not just in the here and now, but for the long-term.

12/ The pause on the J&J vaccine may have shaken some people's confidence in the J&J vaccine... but most still remain confident in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

11/ We need to do a better job of reaching out to Latinx communities: - where/when can they get vaccinated? - are they eligible? Information and services need to be provided in multiple languages and be culturally appropriate.

10/ Incentives like being free to travel or attend large gatherings (sports, concerts) are appealing to everyone... as are getting paid time off to get vaccinated and more convenient vaccination sites.

9/ Young adults are especially responsive to incentives around travel and large gatherings -- all the fun stuff we do when we're young and free!

8/ We need to do a much better job of reaching young people of color. A big chunk are in the "wait & see" camp, which means they're moveable.

7/

6/ Many young Americans want to "wait & see." But they also want to do what their friends are doing. If you're a teen or 20-something (or really anyone), be a role model! Take that selfie pic/video when you get vaccinated and post it online.

5/ Latinx people aren't sure how/where to get vaccinated and whether they are eligible. Language (and other) barriers remain a challenge.

4/ Vaccine access remains a major issue for communities of color: - Will they have to miss work (& wages) due to side effects? - Will they have to pay out of pocket? *COVID VACCINES ARE FREE!* - Can they get vaccinated at a place they trust?

3/ Although conservatives, White Evangelicals, and rural Americans are less enthusiastic about getting vaccinated, they're coming around: https://justhumanproductions.org/podcasts/s1e70-country-in-roads-building-vaccine-confidence-in-rural-america-elizabeth-ellis-dana-friend-anna-loge-and-chris-martin… https://justhumanproductions.org/podcasts/s1e73-getting-on-the-right-side-of-conservatives-and-vaccines-gov-chris-christie-brian-castrucci…

2/ We've made progress with those who want to "wait & see" across multiple demographics including communities of color and conservatives, who were the least vaccine confident at the start. The % who definitely don't want to get vaccinated has remained stable since January.

1/ Some important takeaways from @KFF's latest Vaccine Monitor: https://kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-april-2021/… Here's who's most and least enthusiastic about getting vaccinated:

10.1073/pnas.2011529117

The United States experienced historically high numbers of measles cases in 2019, despite achieving national measles vaccination rates above the World Health Organization recommendation of 95% coverage with two doses. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, resulting in suspension of many clinical preventive services, pediatric vaccination rates in the United States have fallen precipitously, dramatically increasing risk of measles resurgence. Previous research has shown that measles outbreaks in high-coverage contexts are driven by spatial clustering of nonvaccination, which decreases local immunity below the herd immunity threshold. However, little is known about how to best conduct surveillance and target interventions to detect and address these high-risk areas, and most vaccination data are reported at the state-level—a resolution too coarse to detect community-level clustering of nonvaccination characteristic of recent outbreaks. In this paper, we perform a series of computational experiments to assess the impact of clustered nonvaccination on outbreak potential and magnitude of bias in predicting disease risk posed by measuring vaccination rates at coarse spatial scales. We find that, when nonvaccination is locally clustered, reporting aggregate data at the state- or county-level can result in substantial underestimates of outbreak risk. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a bright light on the weaknesses in US infectious disease surveillance and a broader gap in our understanding of how to best use detailed spatial data to interrupt and control infectious disease transmission. Our research clearly outlines that finer-scale vaccination data should be collected to prevent a return to endemic measles transmission in the United States.

Fine-scale spatial clustering of measles nonvaccination that increases outbreak potential is obscured by aggregated reporting data

Coverage of this report @FT by @hannahkuchler https://ft.com/content/c00b5648-7a3b-4ce3-9ca3-a3cf848d7f2c

How to reduce the case fatality rate in each age group? Give them vaccines By @VictimOfMaths

How do we keep this list nice and short? #StoptheSpread Vaccinations

Here's the updated, comprehensive list of #SARSCoV2 variants that are resistant to vaccines

The variants of concern/interest fall into a spectrum of immune evasiveness, w/ B.1.351 being most; B.1.1.7, B.1.429 least. This property pertains to potential for reinfection & some reduction in vaccine efficacy My prelim estimates based on publications/preprints, subject to Δ

Event: The CONQUEST study has collected data on the contacts, behaviour & symptoms of staff & students @BristolUni during #COVID19 to inform policy & math modelling. Join us for this webinar on 8 June for an update on the study, its impact & future plans. http://bit.ly/3oXk8UM

Preliminary analysis from the JUNIPER consortium on potential community transmission of B.1.617.2. It was considered at SAGE 89 on 13 May 2021. The paper is the assessment of the evidence at the time of writing. As new evidence or data emerges, SAGE updates its advice accordingly. This paper should be read alongside the paper SPI-M-O: Consensus statement on COVID-19, also released under SAGE 89. These documents are released as pre-print publications that have provided the government with rapid evidence during an emergency. These documents have not been peer-reviewed and there is no restriction on authors submitting and publishing this evidence in peer-reviewed journals. Redactions in this document have been made to remove any security markings.

JUNIPER: Potential community transmission of B.1.617.2 inferred by S-gene positivity - briefing note, 11 May 2021

We're now very close to the lowest US death rate since the start of the pandemic

The year of 2020 disrupted the way many of us work due to the global pandemic (COVID-19). Such disruptions included the sudden transition from physical to virtual workspaces, loss and change of jobs, and increased life demands outside of work. Meanwhile, recent technological advances have transformed the way people interact and conceptualize “work” (e.g., gig economy). This panel brings together leading scholars whose research speaks to how the nature of work has recently changed (highlighting specific effects of COVID-19 over the past year), and how it is likely to evolve further in the future. Learn more about this panel discussion.

Reimagining Work After COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic is well into its second year, but countries are only beginning to grapple with the lasting health crisis. In March, a UK consortium reported that 1 in 5 people who were hospitalized with the disease had a new disability after discharge1. A large US study found similar effects for both hospitalized and non-hospitalized people2. Among adults who were not hospitalized, 1 in 10 have ongoing symptoms 12 weeks after a positive test3. Treatment services for the long-term consequences of COVID-19 are already having to be absorbed into health and care systems urgently. Tackling this requires a much clearer picture of the burden of the disease than currently exists.

Count the cost of disability caused by COVID-19

10.31222/osf.io/w3frb

For centuries, the scientific community has played a major part in the progress of humanity. Scientific and technological innovations have boosted labour productivity, enabled important social progress, eradicated diseases, and generally improved the quality of life for most people. However, over the last decades, a worrisome trend of science-skepticism is on the rise. At the level of individuals, it renders citizens non-cooperating with scientifically informed policies, such as vaccination and social distancing policies. At the level of communities, which are often organized politically, skepticism may prevent translation of scientific consensus to political consensus and adoption of needed policies, such as reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Here, we consider the mechanisms that may underlie the diminishing trust in the scientific community, and suggest five strategies to regain this trust: (1) Incentivize direct public outreach. (2) Form a nationwide science communication network. (3) Adopt official, agnostic stands in non-scientific debates. (4) Continuously communicate with leaders of wary groups. (5) Strive for unbiased academic evaluation practices. Following these strategies will hopefully increase public trust by adapting science communication to the era of social media, diversifying the scientific community, and facilitating collaboration with wary communities.

From the ivory tower to the public square: Strategies to restore public trust in science

While restrictions in England could lift soon, impact of Delta variant on vaccination programme is uncertain

Covid variants: how much protection do the different vaccines offer?

Summed up well by @MollyJongFast, especially for delta, the most challenging one so farQuote TweetMolly Jong-Fast@MollyJongFast · 9 JunWe are so lucky that the vaccines work on the variants

10.1140/epjds/s13688-021-00286-7

Linked social media and survey data have the potential to be a unique source of information for social research. While the potential usefulness of this methodology is widely acknowledged, very few studies have explored methodological aspects of such linkage. Respondents produce planned amounts of survey data, but highly variant amounts of social media data. This study explores this asymmetry by examining the amount of social media data available to link to surveys. The extent of variation in the amount of data collected from social media could affect the ability to derive meaningful linked indicators and could introduce possible biases. Linked Twitter data from respondents to two longitudinal surveys representative of Great Britain, the Innovation Panel and the NatCen Panel, show that there is indeed substantial variation in the number of tweets posted and the number of followers and friends respondents have. Multivariate analyses of both data sources show that only a few respondent characteristics have a statistically significant effect on the number of tweets posted, with the number of followers being the strongest predictor of posting in both panels, women posting less than men, and some evidence that people with higher education post less, but only in the Innovation Panel. We use sentiment analyses of tweets to provide an example of how the amount of Twitter data collected can impact outcomes using these linked data sources. Results show that more negatively coded tweets are related to general happiness, but not the number of positive tweets. Taken together, the findings suggest that the amount of data collected from social media which can be linked to surveys is an important factor to consider and indicate the potential for such linked data sources in social research.

Linking Twitter and survey data: asymmetry in quantity and its impact

10.31234/osf.io/h4byg

This manuscript aims to make two things clear. First, perhaps (to improve matters) Psychological Science should provide pupils (and others) proper tools, and a basis. Perhaps Psychological Science should be more aware of, acknowledge, focus on, train, and try and optimize what possibly underlies, permeates, and/or influences nearly everything mentioned in this manuscript: reasoning, logic, and argumentation. Secondly, it is hoped that this manuscript makes clear that there might be a distinct possibility that seen from several different perspectives, in several different ways, and on several different levels Psychological Science replicates just fine.

Psychological Science replicates just fine, thanks

10.31234/osf.io/ykz2n

Background Difficulties in deploying mental health assessments during disasters have resulted in emerging research examining the use of social media as a population mental health monitoring tool. This review synthesises this literature, with particular focus on research methods and applications. Methods The field of social media monitoring of mental health during disasters was rapidly mapped using a scoping review methodology. Six interdisciplinary research databases were searched for relevant articles, with data extracted on the articles’ applications and data collection and analysis methods. Articles were then synthesised via narrative review. Results Forty-seven papers were identified. Three application themes emerged, including: (i) estimating mental health burden; (ii) planning or evaluating interventions and policies, and (iii) knowledge discovery, where theories of human behaviour and mental health were evaluated. Applications across 30 mental health issues were identified, with mental health typically assessed using established linguistic dictionaries. Features extracted from social media data included linguistic, psycholinguistic, behavioural, and demographic features. Analytic techniques involved machine learning, statistical modelling, and qualitative analyses. Conclusions The application of social media monitoring has considerable potential for measuring the mental health impact on populations during disasters. As an emerging field, opportunities for further work were identified to improve mental health assessment methods, examine specific mental health conditions, and trial tools in real-world settings. Platforms integrated with such techniques may offer significant benefits for monitoring mental health in contexts where formal assessments are difficult to deploy, and may potentially be harnessed to monitor the impact of response efforts and intervention delivery.

Social media monitoring of mental health during disasters: A scoping review of methods and applications

10.31234/osf.io/pt8j7

Conspiracy theories regularly refer to the allegedly transhumanist agenda of the elites. We hypothesized that believers in conspiracy theories would hold more unfavorable attitudes toward the transhumanist movement. We examined the association between belief in conspiracy theories and attitudes toward transhumanism in two pre-registered studies (based on two French samples, total N after exclusion = 550). We found no evidence of a negative relation between belief in conspiracy theories and attitudes toward transhumanism. This null result was further corroborated by Bayesian analyses, equivalence test, and an internal mini meta-analysis. This work plays a precursor role in understanding the attitudes toward an international cultural and intellectual movement that continues to grow in popularity and influence.

No Evidence That Believers in Conspiracy Theories Have More Negative Attitudes Toward Transhumanism

10.31234/osf.io/h3stw

Visual displays, such as icon arrays and risk ladders, are often used to communicate numerical health information. Number lines improve reasoning with rational numbers but are seldom used in health contexts. College students compared rates for information related to COVID-19 (e.g., number of deaths and number of cases) in one of four randomly-assigned conditions: icon arrays, risk ladders, number lines, or no accompanying visual display. As predicted, number lines facilitated performance on these problems – the number line condition outperformed the other visual display conditions, which did not perform any better than the no visual display condition. In addition, higher performance on the health-related math problems was associated with higher COVID-19 worry for oneself and others, higher perceptions of COVID-19 severity, and higher endorsement of intentions to engage in preventive health behaviors, even when controlling for baseline math skills. These findings have important implications for effectively presenting health statistics.

Adults' Health-Related Problem Solving Is Facilitated by Number Lines, But Not Risk Ladders and Icon Arrays

The delta variant first identified in India is now causing 91 per cent of coronavirus infections in the UK, said health secretary Matt Hancock. He told MPs this was according to an assessment he saw on Wednesday evening. Hancock was speaking during more than four hours of questioning by MPs on the science and health committees.

Covid-19 news: Delta variant now causing 91 per cent of UK cases

10.31234/osf.io/uksxt

Physical and mental health are determined by an interplay between nature, i.e. genetics, and nurture, which encompasses experiences and exposures that can be short or long-lasting. Depressive episodes, for example, are partly the result of an interaction between stressful life-events and a genetic predisposition to depression The COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique situation in which whole communities were suddenly and simultaneously exposed to both the virus and the societal changes required to combat the virus. We studied 27,537 population-based biobank participants for whom we have genetic data and extensive longitudinal data collected via 19 questionnaires over 10 months, starting in March 2020. This allowed us to explore the interaction between genetics and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals’ wellbeing over time. We observe that genetics affected many aspects of well-being, but also that its impact on several phenotypes changed over time. Over the course of the pandemic, we observed that the genetic predisposition to life satisfaction had an increasing influence on perceived quality of life. These results suggest that people’s genetic constitution manifested more prominently over time, potentially due to social isolation driven by strict COVID-19 containment measures. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the contribution of genetic variation to complex phenotypes is dynamic rather than static.

Increased genetic contribution to wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic

10.31234/osf.io/mpn3w

As the mental health crisis deepens with the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, there is an increasing need for understanding individuals’ emotional experiences. We have built a large-scale Korean text corpus with five self-labeled psychological ground-truths: empathy, loneliness, stress, personality, and emotions. We collected 19,025 documents of daily emotional experiences from 3,805 Korean residents from October to December 2020. We collected 42,128 sentences with different levels of theory-of-mind. Each sentence was annotated by trained psychology students and reviewed by experts. Participants varied in their ages from the early 20s to late 80s and had various social and economic statuses. The pandemic impacted the majority of daily lives, and participants often reported negative emotional experiences. We found the most frequent topics: responses to confirmed cases, health concerns of family members, anger towards people without masks, stress-relief strategies, change of the lifestyle, and preventive practices. We then trained the Word2Vec model to observe specific words that match each topic from the topic model. The current dataset will serve as benchmark data for large-scale and computational methods for identifying mental health levels based on text. This dataset is expected to be used and transformed in many creative ways to mitigate COVID-19-related mental health problems.

Building a Psychological Ground Truth Dataset with Empathy and Theory-of-Mind During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Q1. What is a health disparity or health inequity? Who is affected by them the most? #healthpsychchat

An estimated 1 million people in private households in the UK say they had long covid in the four weeks to 2 May, according to the latest survey from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Long covid has lasted over a year for 376,000 people in the UK

The UK has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for use in children aged 12 to 15.

UK approves Pfizer/BioNTech covid-19 vaccine in children aged 12 to 15

Genomic analysis draws a link between a devastating second COVID wave in Brazil and increased travel and contact.

‘The perfect storm’: lax social distancing fuelled a coronavirus variant’s Brazilian surge

10.1016/S2666-7568(21)00119-7

Disease outbreaks in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) have been a large driver of morbidity and mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. This susceptibility to outbreaks in LTCFs is likely to be multifactorial, including frailty of residents, structural and environmental characteristics of buildings (eg, shared spaces, ventilation, and outdoor access), staffing policies and models, and the value society places on older people and LTCFs.1Andrew M Searle SD McElhaney JE et al.COVID-19, frailty and long-term care: Implications for policy and practice.J Infect Dev Ctries. 2020; 14: 428-432Crossref PubMed Scopus (7) Google Scholar Understanding of the true burden of COVID-19 in LTCFs has been limited by gaps in measurement and reporting. The impact of COVID-19 has evolved during subsequent pandemic waves, but estimates suggest that internationally more than 40% of deaths have occurred among residents of LTCFs,2International Long-Term Care Policy Networkhttps://ltccovid.org/international-reports-on-covid-19-and-long-term-care/Date accessed: April 27, 2021Google Scholar with many national and local estimates indicating a much higher death toll. Additionally, LTCF staff have been greatly affected as frontline workers.3White EM Wetle TF Reddy A Baier RR Front-line nursing home staff experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic.J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2021; 22: 199-203Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Google Scholar,  4Sarabia-Cobo C Pérez V de Lorena P et al.Experiences of geriatric nurses in nursing home settings across four countries in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.J Adv Nurs. 2021; 77: 869-878Crossref PubMed Scopus (4) Google Scholar Patterns of vulnerability to SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission within LTCF environments are thus crucial to addressing the pandemic at both clinical and policy levels. In The Lancet Healthy Longevity, Maria Krutikov and colleagues5Krutikov M Palmer T Tut G et al.Incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection according to baseline antibody status in staff and residents of 100 long-term care facilities (VIVALDI): a prospective cohort study.Lancet Healthy Longev. 2021; 2: e362-e370Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Google Scholar studied the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection according to baseline antibody status in staff and residents in 100 LTCFs in England. Their findings make an important contribution to ongoing efforts to understand SARS-CoV-2 immunity and correlates of protection.

COVID-19 susceptibility in long-term care facilities

10.31234/osf.io/hfm43

Monetary and legal incentives have been proposed to promote COVID-19 vaccination uptake. To evaluate the suitability of incentives, an experiment with German participants examined the effects of payments (varied within subjects: 0 to 10,000 EUR) and freedoms (varied between subjects: vaccination leading vs. not leading to the same benefits as a negative test result) on the vaccination intentions of previously unvaccinated individuals (n = 782). While no effect could be found for freedoms, the share of participants willing to be vaccinated increased with the payment amount. However, a significant change required large rewards of 3,250 EUR or more. While monetary incentives could increase vaccination uptake by a few percentage points, the high costs of implementation challenge the efficiency of the measure and call for alternatives. As experimental data suggest that considering vaccination as safe, necessary, and prosocial increases an individual’s likelihood of wanting to get vaccinated without payment, educational campaigns should emphasize these features when promoting vaccination against COVID-19.

Payments and freedoms: Effects of monetary and legal incentives on COVID-19 vaccination intentions in Germany

Allegations that COVID escaped from a Chinese lab make it harder for nations to collaborate on ending the pandemic — and fuel online bullying, some scientists say.

Divisive COVID ‘lab leak’ debate prompts dire warnings from researchers

10.31234/osf.io/x94kv

Adolescence is a critical period for social development, which COVID-19 has dramatically altered. Quarantined youths had limited in-person interactions with peers. The present study used an intensive longitudinal design to investigate changes in interpersonal dynamics and mental health during COVID-19. Specifically, we investigated whether the associations between different social contexts – i.e., “spillover” – changed during COVID-19, and whether changes in social interactions during COVID-19 was associated with changes in depressive symptoms. Approximately one year prior to the onset of COVID-19, 139 youths reported depressive symptoms and daily interactions with parents, siblings, and friends, every day for 21 days via online questionnaires. Shortly after schools closed due to COVID-19, 115 of these youths completed a similar 28-day diary. Analyses included 112 youths (62 girls, 73% Caucasian; Mage=11.77, range 8-15 in Wave 1) who completed at least 13 diary days in each data wave. Our results show that younger adolescents experienced significant decreases in negative and positive interactions with friends, whereas older adolescents showed significant decreases in negative interactions with friends and significant increases in positive interactions with siblings. As predicted, within-day spillover of positive interactions and person-level association of negative interactions increased within the family during COVID-19, whereas within-day spillover of positive interactions between family and friends decreased. We also found a dramatic increase in depressive symptoms. More negative interactions and fewer positive interactions with family members were associated with changes in depressive symptoms. Our study sheds light on how youths’ social development may be impacted by COVID-19.

Connections during Crisis: Adolescents’ social dynamics and mental health during COVID-19

10.31234/osf.io/56kcp

Objective Although cross-sectional studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected the mental health of adolescents, the effect of the pandemic on adolescents with pre-pandemic symptoms is unclear. We therefore tested the hypothesis that adolescents had increased emotional and behavioral problems during the lockdowns imposed during the pandemic. Method This study included three measurements in a prospective cohort of 1022 adolescents who were oversampled based on their high risk of developing psychopathology. Before the pandemic, we assessed depressive, anxiety, stress, oppositional defiant problems, psychotic experiences and suicidality, using the Youth Self-Report; 445 and 333 of these 1022 adolescents subsequently completed the online questionnaire in the first lockdown (in April 2020) and in the second lockdown (in January 2021), respectively. Multilevel random intercept regression models were used to determine the change in psychiatric symptoms, including an interaction term to assess whether these changes differed based on the severity of symptoms prior to the pandemic. Results Throughout the pandemic, the majority of adolescents reported having emotional and behavioral symptoms that were within the normal range. Moreover, the mean symptom scores for all six outcomes decreased significantly among adolescents with high clinical severity prior to the pandemic. Conclusion In contrast to our original hypothesis, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic may not necessarily be detrimental, at least among a specific subgroup of adolescents with preexisting mental health problems. Moreover, our finding that most adolescents did not report experiencing clinically relevant symptoms during the pandemic reflects their resilience during the pandemic.

A longitudinal study of mental health in adolescents before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

10.31234/osf.io/65xmg

Cooperation is essential to overcome global pandemics and other health crises, as many preventative measures require people to bear a personal cost to benefit other people or society as a whole. Wearing a face mask, for example, protects other people more than it protects oneself. In this essay, we discuss several mechanisms that are known to promote cooperation in economic games and real-world scenarios, with a special focus on message-based interventions that might be helpful to promote social distancing, mask wearing, physical hygiene, vaccine uptake, and information seeking. Lessons learned and future research ideas are offered.

Cooperation and acting for the greater good during the COVID-19 pandemic

REPORTS of pet cats and dogs catching covid-19 from their owners are mounting. They come as no surprise to virologist Gary Whittaker. For the past year, he has surveyed cats brought to a veterinary hospital around the corner from New York Presbyterian hospital in Manhattan’s affluent Upper East Side, which was ground zero for covid-19 in the US last spring. His unpublished findings suggest that around 15 to 20 per cent of pet cats in the area have antibodies for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19. “Cats are easily exposed,” says Whittaker. Yet most of them are doing fine, as are infected dogs. “What’s puzzling is that cats are dealing with it pretty well, but they can’t cope with their own coronavirus.”

What coronaviruses in pets can teach us about the future of covid-19

10.31234/osf.io/my4ze

Given that videoconferencing serves as a crucial means for remote teaching, the current study investigated higher education students’ (non)use of webcams and engagement in synchronous online courses. Three phases were studied: (1) A state of engagement; (2) antecedents that influence it; and (3) consequences of engagement. In particular, the aim of the study was to describe the status quo of students’ situation-specific engagement and to analyze potential factors contributing to it, namely, course characteristics, behavior of others, and individuals’ perceptions. Furthermore, the extent to which verbal and visual engagement influence each other was investigated. The cross-sectional online survey encompassed 4,143 students from all fields of studies of a comprehensive university. Results indicated that visual and verbal engagement were only slightly related to each other. Structural equation modelling revealed different direct and indirect influences on either visual or verbal engagement in synchronous online higher education courses. Due to the novelty of the research scope, results of this study provide a foundation for further investigation.

Visual and Verbal Engagement of Higher Education Students in Videoconferencing

10.31234/osf.io/bfw76

In three experiments based on 977 participants, we investigated whether people would show belief bias by letting their prior beliefs on politically charged topics unduly influence their reasoning when updating beliefs based on evidence. Participants saw data from fictional studies and made judgments of how strongly COVID-19 mitigation measures influenced the number of COVID-19 cases (political problems) or a medicine influenced number of headaches (neutral problems). We predicted that liberals would overestimate and conservatives would underestimate causal strength on political problems relative to neutral problems. In Experiments 1 and 2, liberals showed this overestimation bias. Surprisingly, college-student conservatives in Experiment 2 showed the same overestimation as liberals. These findings made sense because all three groups who overestimated the strength of mitigation measures held prior beliefs that strongly favored use of these measures. In Experiment 3, conservatives’ judgments of the strength of mitigation measures after seeing evidence increased as their degree of prior support for these measures increased. Furthermore, conservatives who strongly opposed the use of mitigation measures underestimated causal strength in the political problems. These results suggest that belief bias is driven more by specific beliefs relevant to the reasoning context than to general attitudinal factors like political ideology.

Biased belief updating in causal reasoning about COVID-19

10.31234/osf.io/evmgs

Given the need for a rapid and supposed critical response from behavioural sciences during times of crisis, this study aimed to track the development of COVID-19 psychology-related preprints. We tracked the first 211 COVID related preprints on the repository PsyArXiv. Specifically, we tracked who was submitting preprints, what the preprints were investigating, and whether the preprints lead to publications and their impact (measured by Google Scholar citations). We then followed up with the preprints about a year later to determine the number of preprints that lead to publication and the number of citations they received. The results showed that males from western countries submitted most preprints. Fifty-one per cent of preprints used a survey design, and the most common topic for covid-19 related preprints was mental health. Eighty-three per cent of preprints did not meet credible open science measures. 54% of the sampled preprints had been published in peer-reviewed journals, with a median time between preprint upload and publication of 105 days. Metascience preprints were more likely to be published, and preprints with reviews had lower citation rates. Overall, the results demonstrate that some of the structural problems in research are still in play despite global efforts to mobilise research efforts during the pandemic.

Who, What, Where: Tracking the development of COVID-19 related PsyArXiv preprints

10.31234/osf.io/n3dyf

Effectively motivating social distancing—keeping a physical distance from others —has become a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country preregistered experiment (n=25,718 in 89 countries) tested hypotheses derived from self-determination theory concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of different motivational messages encouraging social distancing. Participants were randomly assigned to three conditions: an autonomy-supportive message promoting reflective choices, a controlling message that was restrictive and shaming, or no message. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses: the controlling message increased defiance relative to the autonomy-supportive message and increased controlled motivation (which itself correlated with more defiance and less long-term behavioural intentions to engage in social distancing) relative to no message, but messages did not influence behavioural intentions. Despite small experimental effects on defiance and motivation (rs= .07 and .10), this work highlights the potential harm of controlling public health messages and potential benefits of autonomy-supportive ones.

A Global Experiment on Motivating Social Distancing during the COVID-19 Pandemic

10.31234/osf.io/sx6t7

Internet memes are phenomena that rapidly gain popularity on the Internet which construct intercultural discourse. Using visual rhetoric, the Internet memes convey a set of symbols and ideals that express socio-political structure represented on the Internet. The story of memes is crucial in understanding the digital culture along with revealing the identity of an Internet subculture, as well as in analyzing the impacts of this cultural artifact. This study analyzes the nature and functions of internet memes and its contribution to formulate a new cultural discourse. The findings have been instrumented to illustrate how memes operate as rhetoric to explore the intercultural communication and identity construction prevalent in representative cyber-culture. It has specially been targeted to inquire the inter-textual nature of memes which are created and disseminated by the Bangladeshi Facebook prosumers. In addition, the study makes a comparison of theoretical approaches to the study of memes, including visual rhetoric approach which combines elements of the semiotic and discursive approaches to study the persuasive constituents of visual texts. These methods help deconstruct a sign or a text and decode possible hidden meanings through discourse analysis in terms of written texts and through semiotic analysis in terms of images. The presence of both an image (sign) and a caption (text) in an internet meme requires such a combined approach for reflective output.

Internet Memes as Form of Cultural Discourse: A Rhetorical Analysis on Facebook