The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.

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Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response.

Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. Emotional contagion is well established in laboratory experiments, with people transferring positive and negative emotions to others. Data from a large real-world social network, collected over a 20-y period suggests that longer-lasting moods (e.g., depression, happiness) can be transferred through networks [Fowler JH, Christakis NA (2008) BMJ 337:a2338], although the results are controversial. In an experiment with people who use Facebook, we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the News Feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks. This work also suggests that, in contrast to prevailing assumptions, in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and that the observation of others' positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.

/pdf/experimental-evidence-of-massive-scale-emotional-contagion-3ncbihzoj3.pdf

Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks

Huge citizens expose to social media during a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbroke in Wuhan, China. We assess the prevalence of mental health problems and examine their association with social media exposure. A cross-sectional study among Chinese citizens aged≥18 years old was conducted during Jan 31 to Feb 2, 2020. Online survey was used to do rapid assessment. Total of 4872 participants from 31 provinces and autonomous regions were involved in the current study. Besides demographics and social media exposure (SME), depression was assessed by The Chinese version of WHO-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5) and anxiety was assessed by Chinese version of generalized anxiety disorder scale (GAD-7). multivariable logistic regressions were used to identify associations between social media exposure with mental health problems after controlling for covariates. The prevalence of depression, anxiety and combination of depression and anxiety (CDA) was 48.3% (95%CI: 46.9%-49.7%), 22.6% (95%CI: 21.4%-23.8%) and 19.4% (95%CI: 18.3%-20.6%) during COVID-19 outbroke in Wuhan, China. More than 80% (95%CI:80.9%-83.1%) of participants reported frequently exposed to social media. After controlling for covariates, frequently SME was positively associated with high odds of anxiety (OR = 1.72, 95%CI: 1.31-2.26) and CDA (OR = 1.91, 95%CI: 1.52-2.41) compared with less SME. Our findings show there are high prevalence of mental health problems, which positively associated with frequently SME during the COVID-19 outbreak. These findings implicated the government need pay more attention to mental health problems, especially depression and anxiety among general population and combating with "infodemic" while combating during public health emergency.

/pdf/mental-health-problems-and-social-media-exposure-during-33pi82q05x.pdf

Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak.

This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ The institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and ‘continuous experiments.’ An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fjit.2015.5.pdf

Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization

Today's social bots are sophisticated and sometimes menacing. Indeed, their presence can endanger online ecosystems as well as our society.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2818717

The rise of social bots

We examine how social support (perceived support and support from a spouse, or committed partner) may influence pregnant women's information seeking behaviors on a pregnancy website. We assess information seeking behavior among participants in a trial testing the effectiveness of a web-based intervention for appropriate gestational weight gain. Participants were pregnant women (N = 1,329) recruited from clinics and private practices in one county in the Northeast United States. We used logistic regression models to estimate the likelihood of viewing articles, blogs, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and resources on the website as a function of perceived social support, and support from a spouse or relationship partner. All models included socio-demographic controls (income, education, number of adults and children living at home, home Internet use, and race/ethnicity). Compared to single women, women who were married or in a committed relationship were more likely to information seek online by viewing articles (OR 1.95, 95 % CI [1.26-3.03]), FAQs (OR 1.64 [1.00-2.67]), and blogs (OR 1.88 [1.24-2.85]). Women who felt loved and valued (affective support) were more likely to seek information by viewing articles on the website (OR 1.19 [1.00-1.42]). While the Internet provides a space for people who have less social support to access health information, findings from this study suggest that for pregnant women, women who already had social support were most likely to seek information online. This finding has important implications for designing online systems and content to encourage pregnant women with fewer support resources to engage with content.

Does Social Support Predict Pregnant Mothers’ Information Seeking Behaviors on an Educational Website?

Managing one's availability for interaction with others is an increasingly complex act, involving multiple media and the sharing of many types of information. In this paper we draw on a field study of 183 SMS users to introduce the idea of the "interpersonal awareness narrative" -- the coherent, plausible and sometimes deceptive stories that people tell each other about their availability and activities. We examine participants' use of deception in these accounts, and focus in particular on "butler lies," those lies told to enter or exit conversations or to arrange other interactions. We argue that participants use this type of deception in SMS strategically, drawing on the inherent ambiguities of SMS while maintaining plausible narratives.

"on my way": deceptive texting and interpersonal awareness narratives

One reason that tobacco-sponsored smoking cessation ads are less effective than those sponsored by public health agencies may be that the persuasive arguments in tobacco-sponsored ads are inherently weaker than arguments made in public health ads. An alternate explanation is that sponsorship disclosure on the face of the ad activates resistance, partly because of credibility judgments directed toward tobacco companies. The authors test hypotheses in a 3 (sponsor identification) × 2 (ad content) randomized factorial experiment (N = 270). Results indicate that judgments of sponsor credibility play a mediating role in perceptions of ad effectiveness, with identification of a tobacco company as the sponsor of cessation ads undermining perceived credibility compared with the same ads without the tobacco company identified. However, the reduction in credibility resulting from tobacco sponsorship can be partially overcome when the sponsor is placed on more direct ad content (public health ads). The effects of cr...

The unintended consequences of disclosure: effect of manipulating sponsor identification on the perceived credibility and effectiveness of smoking cessation advertisements.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals are at increased risk for tobacco use compared to those who are not LGBT. The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products l...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10810730.2019.1615582

Jamie Guillory

Papers

Does Social Support Predict Pregnant Mothers’ Information Seeking Behaviors on an Educational Website?

"on my way": deceptive texting and interpersonal awareness narratives

The unintended consequences of disclosure: effect of manipulating sponsor identification on the perceived credibility and effectiveness of smoking cessation advertisements.

LGBT Identity and Its Influence on Perceived Effectiveness of Advertisements from a LGBT Tobacco Public Education Campaign

Deception with Technology