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Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing was one of the more important behaviours for reducing the spread of the virus. The present study investigated the influence on pathogen avoidance of familiarity with other people at private gatherings. Based on the social identity model of risk takin...

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Autores principales: Taubert, Frederike, Sprengholz, Philipp, Korn, Lars, Eitze, Sarah, Wiedermann, Marc, Betsch, Cornelia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9912235/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36765159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29239-y
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author Taubert, Frederike
Sprengholz, Philipp
Korn, Lars
Eitze, Sarah
Wiedermann, Marc
Betsch, Cornelia
author_facet Taubert, Frederike
Sprengholz, Philipp
Korn, Lars
Eitze, Sarah
Wiedermann, Marc
Betsch, Cornelia
author_sort Taubert, Frederike
collection PubMed
description During the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing was one of the more important behaviours for reducing the spread of the virus. The present study investigated the influence on pathogen avoidance of familiarity with other people at private gatherings. Based on the social identity model of risk taking and the theory of the behavioural immune system, we assumed that greater familiarity with others would make people feel more connected with one another and decrease situational pathogen avoidance. This could result in lower perceptions of the risk of contracting COVID-19 and fewer protective behaviours. Two experiments (n(1) = 1022, n(2) = 994) showed that the negative influence of greater familiarity on the perceived risk of infection and protective behaviour is explained by an increased feeling of connectedness and less feeling of situational pathogen avoidance. In an additional survey, the participants (n = 23,023) rated the quality of their past social contacts. The correlational analyses showed that the familiarity of the other person was more important in explaining variance in protective behaviours than attitudes toward those behaviours or the pandemic situation itself. Understanding the process that result in an explosive increase in infection after social gatherings can improve infection control in the future.
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spelling pubmed-99122352023-02-10 Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic Taubert, Frederike Sprengholz, Philipp Korn, Lars Eitze, Sarah Wiedermann, Marc Betsch, Cornelia Sci Rep Article During the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing was one of the more important behaviours for reducing the spread of the virus. The present study investigated the influence on pathogen avoidance of familiarity with other people at private gatherings. Based on the social identity model of risk taking and the theory of the behavioural immune system, we assumed that greater familiarity with others would make people feel more connected with one another and decrease situational pathogen avoidance. This could result in lower perceptions of the risk of contracting COVID-19 and fewer protective behaviours. Two experiments (n(1) = 1022, n(2) = 994) showed that the negative influence of greater familiarity on the perceived risk of infection and protective behaviour is explained by an increased feeling of connectedness and less feeling of situational pathogen avoidance. In an additional survey, the participants (n = 23,023) rated the quality of their past social contacts. The correlational analyses showed that the familiarity of the other person was more important in explaining variance in protective behaviours than attitudes toward those behaviours or the pandemic situation itself. Understanding the process that result in an explosive increase in infection after social gatherings can improve infection control in the future. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-02-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9912235/ /pubmed/36765159 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29239-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Taubert, Frederike
Sprengholz, Philipp
Korn, Lars
Eitze, Sarah
Wiedermann, Marc
Betsch, Cornelia
Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic
title Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short Situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort situational pathogen avoidance mediates the impact of social connectedness on preventive measures during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9912235/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36765159
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-29239-y
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