When,why, and how do People Deviate from Physical Distancing Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Study

Introduction:To limit the spread of COVID-19, many countries, including Belgium, have installed physical distancing measures. Yet, adherence to these newly installed behavioral measures has been described as challenging and effortful. Based on the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) model, this study performed an in-depth evaluation of when, why, and how people deviated from the physical distancing measures.Methods:An online mixed-method study was conducted among Belgian adults (N = 2055) in the beginning of May 2020. Participants were recruited via an open call through email and social media platforms, using snowball sampling. Conditions wherein people deviated from the physical distancing measures were assessed by means of an open-ended question. HAPA determinants were assessed in a quantitative way.Results:Half of the sample reported to deviate from the measures. Further, deviation from the measures was associated with each determinant outlined by the HAPA. Findings highlight that many people deviated from the measures because of their need for social contact. The majority of the people who deviated from the measures stated that they carefully weighed the risks of their behavior.Conclusions:Need for social contact pushed people to deviate from physical distancing measures in a deliberate manner. Potential areas for future interventions aimed at promoting adherence to physical distancing measures and enhancing psychosocial well-being are discussed.     

Systematic Withdrawal

Although AGM theory contraction (Alchourrón et al., 1985; Alchourrón and Makinson, 1985) occupies a central position in the literature on belief change, there is one aspect about it that has created a fair amount of controversy. It involves the inclusion of the postulate known as Recovery. As a result, a number of alternatives to AGM theory contraction have been proposed that do not always satisfy the Recovery postulate (Levi, 1991, 1998; Hansson and Olsson, 1995; Fermé, 1998; Fermé and Rodriguez, 1998; Rott and Pagnucco, 1999). In this paper we present a new addition, systematic withdrawal, to the family of withdrawal operations, as they have become known. We define systematic withdrawal semantically, in terms of a set of preorders, and show that it can be characterised by a set of postulates. In a comparison of withdrawal operations we show that AGM contraction, systematic withdrawal and the severe withdrawal of Rott and Pagnucco (1999) are intimately connected by virtue of their definition in terms of sets of preorders. In a future paper it will be shown that this connection can be extended to include the epistemic entrenchment orderings of Gärdenfors (1988) and Gärdenfors and Makinson (1988) and the refined entrenchment orderings of Meyer et al. (2000).     

Telemetry Provides New Insights into Entrainment of Activity Wheel Circadian Rhythms and the Role of Body Temperature in the Development of Ulcers in the Activity-Stress Paradigm

Two methods of monitoring the circadian rhythm of activity in rodents: (1) an activity wheel cage, which detects the number of wheel revolutions, and (2) an internal radio transmitter, which records gross motor activity (GMA) of the animal, were compared in both normal circadian cycles and during the development of activity-stress ulcers. Rats were implanted with a biotelemetry transmitter that detected GMA and body temperature (BT) and placed in activity wheel cages. A 12 hour/12 hour light/dark cycle was maintained throughout the experiment. Subjects were subdivided into two groups: (1) unlimited access to activity wheel (AW) cages and (2) locked activity wheel (LW) cages. Following an ad-libitum habituation period, animals were allowed food access for 1 hour/day during the light. In the habituation period, the animals showed higher GMA and BT during the dark phase when housed in AW cages than in LW cages. Both GMA and number of wheel revolutions increased dramatically after the onset of food restriction for the AW animals. There was a deleterious drop in BT in AW animals as the food-restricted period continued and a significant correlation existed between severity of ulcerations and BT. The findings of this experiment demonstrate that the activity wheel imposes an alternation of the circadian cycle, which, in turn, influences rhythmicity through reentrainment. Additionally, in the activity-stress paradigm, a significant drop in BT correlates with severity of ulcerations. A disrupted circadian cycle, involving hypothermia, is proposed as the mechanism underlying the demise of animals in the activity-stress paradigm.     

Attitudes to Marriage and Sexual Behaviors: A Survey of Gender and Culture Differences in China and United Kingdom

This paper reports a survey carried out among 505 university students in China and 338 students in the United Kingdom. The survey included questions on attitudes toward mate-selection preferences, marriage, and sexual behavior. The findings show that traditional values in mate-selection preferences persist more in China than in the United Kingdom and indicate that, despite a profound social revolution over the last two decades, a relatively conservative sexual culture still exists in China today. Traditional morality and attitudes prevail especially among women. Gender and culture differences are discussed.     

Modality exclusivity norms for 423 object properties

Recent work has shown that people routinely use perceptual information during language comprehension and conceptual processing, from single-word recognition to modality-switching costs in property verification. In investigating such links between perceptual and conceptual representations, the use of modality-specific stimuli plays a central role. To aid researchers working in this area, we provide a set of norms for 423 adjectives, each describing an object property, with mean ratings of how strongly that property is experienced through each of five perceptual modalities (visual, haptic, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory). The data set also contains estimates of modality exclusivity—that is, a measure of the extent to which a particular property may be considered unimodal (i.e., perceived through one sense alone). Although there already exists a number of sets of word and object norms, we provide the first set to categorize words describing object properties along the dimensions of the five perceptual modalities. We hope that the norms will be of use to researchers working at the interface between linguistic, conceptual, and perceptual systems. The modality exclusivity norms may be downloaded as supplemental materials for this article from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/ content/supplemental.     

Effects of anxiety and attention control on processing pictorial and linguistic emotional information

This study investigated the role of executive attention control in modulating selective processing of emotional information in anxiety. It was hypothesized that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control would be associated with greater difficulty in ignoring task-irrelevant threat-related information. The study included both faces and words as stimuli. Cognitive interference effects were assessed using two emotional Stroop tasks: one with angry, fearful, happy and neutral faces, and one with threat-related, positive, and neutral words. An objective measure of attention control was obtained from the Attention network task. There were four participant groups with high/low trait anxiety and high/low attention control. Results indicated that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control was associated with greater cognitive interference by emotional faces (including angry faces), compared to neutral faces. This interference effect was not evident in participants with high anxiety and high attentional control, or in low-anxious individuals. There was no evidence of associations between anxiety, attention control, and the interference effect of emotional words. Results indicate that high anxiety and poor attention control together predict enhanced processing of emotionally salient information, such as angry facial expressions. Implications for models of emotion processing are discussed.     

Cognitive models of stereotype change (4): Motivational and cognitive influences

Three experiments investigating the effects of cognitive and motivational factors on stereotype change are reported. Trait ratings in all three experiments showed there to be greater stereotype-change when stereotype-inconsistent information was dispersed across many group members than when it was concentrated in only a few. A sorting task (Experiment 1) indicated that, in the concentrated conditions the stereotype disconfirmers were more strongly isolated from the rest of the group than in the dispersed conditions. Free recall protocols (Experiment 2) showed greater memory for the target exemplars when subjects anticipated interaction with a group member than when no interaction was anticipated. The questions subject chose to ask target group exemplars were also influenced by anticlpated future interaction. Subjects chose more stereotype-inconsistent questions when interactian was anticipated than when no interaction was anticipated. Experment 3 showed the impact of stereotype-inconsistent information to be greater when expectancies for the stereotyped group are weaker A cued-recall task yielded evidence of spontaneous subtyping. All these studies support the subtyping model, even in the presence of cognitive and motivational factors that might be expected to impede stereotype change.     

Sexual Harassment: A Preliminary Test of an Integrative Model1

Despite the recent increase in research on sexual harassment, most studies have examined the relevant variables in isolation, and little is known concerning the ways in which they may interact or the relative importance of their effects for individuals or organizations. Fitzgerald and her colleagues (Fitzgerald, Hulin, & Drasgow. 1995; Fitzgerald & Ormerod, 1993) proposed a model of the antecedents and outcomes of sexual harassment in organizations. The present study examines a modified version of this model using path analysis with a sample of women employed by the federal government in the late 1980s. These analyses support the basic form of the model, suggesting that sexual harassment is a joint function of the gender context of the victim's job, her relative vulnerability, and the tolerance of the organization for sexual harassment. In turn, harassment was shown to have a negative impact on work and health-related outcomes, exacerbated by assertive coping responses. The implications for organizations are discussed along with recommendations for more stringent tests of the model.     

Careers,contingencies, and locus of control among White college women

This study examined social-psychological antecedents of the sex type of occupational preferences and expectations of White college women. High sex-role contingency orientation (SRCO)—attitudes and explanations for occupational choices which reflect a primary and explicit concern with marriage and family—was associated with expectations and preferences for occupations in which females predominate and with the tendency to have more traditionally feminine expectations than preferences.SRCO was significantly related to locus of control (I-E) with women high or intermediate in SRCO being primarily internal or external; women with low SRCO being primarily intermediate in I-E.This study was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the Graduate Research Council of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.