Psychology of SARS risk continue to be useful

In 2004 the Asian Journal of Social Psychology published  a special issue titled SPECIAL ISSUE ON PSYCHOLOGY OF SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME (SARS), by Cecilia Cheng and Catherine So-kum Tang (Eds.)

The subtitle is very interesting, putting the focus on the behaviors related to the background in different culture: The psychology behind the masks: Psychological responses to the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in different regions.

Here I propose a synthesis. I believe it could help us to cope today with COVID-19

In 2002/03 the SARS epidemic alerted the world that public health is no longer a local issue. In this era of globalization, not only people and information but also viruses flow freely without borders. The treatment and prevention of novel, unknown diseases require the joint effort of government bodies and health-care professionals from various countries.

  • Could the current knowledge yielded from coping research help in the understanding of people’s attempts to handle the SARS outbreak?
  • Because SARS affected a number of regions, including people from both Asian and Western cultures, did individuals from different cultures perceive and cope with the crisis in distinct manners?
  • Did people attempt to handle the SARS epidemic in ways that were similar to those with which they attempt to handle stressful daily events?
  • To cope with the outbreak, why did some people engage in preventive health behavior while others ignore the use of preventive measures?

The findings revealed that participants who tended to use wishful thinking (wishing SARS would go away or somehow be over with) were more likely to avoid going to public areas and avoid people who they believed to be affected by SARS. Wishful thinking does not appear to facilitate engaging in critically important health behaviors, such as hand washing and using disinfectants to clean potentially contaminated surfaces

Those who tended to adopt empathic responses (try to understand how the other person felt about SARS) were more likely to undertake measures to prevent SARS, such as wearing face masks and exercising regularly. Therefore they were not only less likely to report avoiding people who may be perceived as potentially having SARS but also more likely to report engaging in precautionary measures and health behaviors likely to be viewed as effective. Hence, those who report using empathic responding in response to SARS appear to use effective precautionary health behaviors without engaging in avoidant health behaviors that were associated with significant economic and societal costs.

Cross-cultural differences in optimistic thinking between the Chinese and European Canadians during the SARS outbreak. The participants were recruited from Beijing and Toronto, and the two samples demonstrated unrealistic optimism, that is, the perception of oneself as less likely than an average person to contract SARS. Compared to their Canadian counterparts, the Chinese participants showed greater unrealistic optimism when estimating their own risks of being infected, but took more preventive measures. The authors concluded that the Chinese dialectical thinking style may have promoted the belief that both negative consequences and positive changes could coexist during the SARS crisis. This belief may have propelled the Chinese to think about their future in a more positive light, and enhance their motivation to adopt a preventive approach to cope with the crisis.

Compared to Singaporean participants who endorsed fewer of the Chinese values (i.e. prudence, industry, and civic harmony), those with a greater tendency to adopt these values were characterized by higher levels of SARS-related fears, greater defensive pessimism, the adoption of more health behaviors, and the experience of more adverse outcomes related to the outbreak.

They tended to perceive most SARS- related stressful events as uncontrollable, and used more emotion-focused coping to handle such events. These findings indicate that individuals had a propensity to be less flexible, both cognitively and behaviorally, in their attempts to handle the SARS epidemic than in their usual practice of handling stress.

Hong Kong high school students in terms of social-cognitive biases after the SARS outbreak. They found that compared to those who practiced SARS preventive behavior (i.e. the practicers), those who did not (i.e. the non- practicers) were more prone to two types of social-cognitive biases: false consensus bias and the actor-observer bias. To elaborate, the non-practicers tended to underestimate the prevalence and importance of prosocial concerns in the preventive behavior that was commonly adopted by practicers during the outbreak.

These findings shed light on how Hong Kong adolescents evaluated prevailing norms and their own motives in the prevention of an emerging epidemic. The authors pointed out that non-practicers of health behavior may believe that their behavioral pattern is widely shared and acceptable in the community, and may thus be less motivated to change their behavior.

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