The COVID-19 pandemic has tested our psychological limits.
Some have been more affected than others by the stress of potential illness and the confusion of constantly changing health information and new restrictions.
In a new study from McGill University, researchers found the pandemic may have also impaired people’s cognitive abilities and altered risk perception, at a time when making the right health choices is critically important.
They surveyed more than 1,500 Americans online from April to June, 2020.
Participants were asked to rate their level of worry about the COVID-19 pandemic and complete a battery of psychological tests to measure their basic cognitive abilities like processing and maintaining information in mind.
The data were then compared to results of the same tests collected before the pandemic.
The researchers found that those who experienced more pandemic-related worry had reduced information processing speed, ability to retain information needed to perform tasks, and heightened sensitivity to the odds they were given when taking risks.
The pandemic group performed more poorly on the simple cognitive tasks than the pre-pandemic group.
Also, participants in the last wave of data collection showed slower processing speed, lower ability to maintain goals in mind, and were more sensitive to risk than those in the first wave.
Interestingly, the study found that pandemic worry predicted individuals’ tendency to distort described risk levels: underweighting likely probabilities and overweighting unlikely probabilities.
This suggests that worry related to COVID may have affected people’s decision-making style, which is crucial as it may influence people’s decisions about getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about this old drug can save your life from COVID-19 and findings of this heartburn drug may help treat COVID-19, reduce severity.
For more information about the pandemic, please see recent studies about scientists find why COVID-19 can trigger severe disease and death and results showing that new drug combo can effectively treat COVID-19 infection.
The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE. One author of the study is Kevin da Silva Castanheira.
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