Emotional Responses to COVID-19 Stressors Increase Information Avoidance About an Important Unrelated Health Threat
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-14-2023
Department
Agriculture & Tourism
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, like other crises, has had direct and indirect impacts on individuals, many of which have been negative. While a large body of research has examined the impacts of COVID-19 on people's lives, there is little evidence about how COVID-19 affects decision-making broadly. Emotional responses to COVID-19-related stressors, such as illness and income loss, provide a pathway for these stressors to affect decision-making. In this study, we examine linkages between exposure to COVID-19-related stressors—focusing on temporally specific local case counts and loss of income due to the pandemic—and decisions to access information about antimicrobial resistance (AMR), another critically important health issue. COVID-19 constitutes a natural experiment in that people's exposure to stressors does not result from those individuals' current decisions...Copyright owned by Public Library of Science.
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0286712
First Page
1
Last Page
15
Publication Title
PLoS ONE
Recommended Citation
Gustafson, C.R., Brooks, K., Meerza, S.I.A., and Yiannaka, A. 2023. “Emotional responses to COVID-19 stressors increase information avoidance about an important unrelated health threat.” PLOS ONE, 18(9): e0286712.