The impact of pandemic-related worry on cognitive functioning and risk-taking
Here, we sought to quantify the effects of experienced fear and worry, engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic, on both cognitive abilities—speed of information processing, task-set shifting, and proactive control—as well as economic risk-taking. Leveraging a repeated-measures cross-sectional design, we...
Enregistré dans:
| Auteurs principaux: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | article |
| Langue: | EN |
| Publié: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2021
|
| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | https://doaj.org/article/a7c39fe94b754e32b9807cc6b3712f7e |
| Tags: |
Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
|
| Résumé: | Here, we sought to quantify the effects of experienced fear and worry, engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic, on both cognitive abilities—speed of information processing, task-set shifting, and proactive control—as well as economic risk-taking. Leveraging a repeated-measures cross-sectional design, we examined the performance of 1517 participants, collected during the early phase of the pandemic in the US (April–June 2020), finding that self-reported pandemic-related worry predicted deficits in information processing speed and maintenance of goal-related contextual information. In a classic economic risk-taking task, we observed that worried individuals’ choices were more sensitive to the described outcome probabilities of risky actions. Overall, these results elucidate the cognitive consequences of a large-scale, unpredictable, and uncontrollable stressor, which may in turn play an important role in individuals’ understanding of, and adherence to safety directives both in the current crisis and future public health emergencies. |
|---|