Can We Do Better Next Time? Italians' Response to the COVID-19 Emergency through a Heuristics and Biases Lens.

Raffaella Misuraca,Costanza Scaffidi Abbate,Silvana Miceli,Lucia Parisi,Francesco Ceresia,Ursina Teuscher,Luigi Vetri,Michele Roccella

doi:10.3390/bs12020039

Abstract

During the outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy, people often failed to adopt behaviors that could have stopped, or at least slowed down, the spread of this deadly disease. We offer cognitive explanations for these decisions, based on some of the most common heuristics and biases that are known to influence human judgment and decision-making, especially under conditions of high uncertainty. Our analysis concludes with the following recommendations: policymakers can and should take advantage of this established science, in order to communicate more effectively and increase the likelihood that people choose responsible actions in a public health crisis.

Highlights

In January 2020, Italian media and journalists informed the public about the alarming spread of a mysterious lethal virus, of the SARS family, in Wuhan (China)
We first examine the main heuristics and cognitive biases that could explain some of the most common behaviors of Italians during COVID-19 that were problematic from a public health standpoint, such as going to crowded discotheques and bars, refusing to wear a mask and, in general, to respect the safety measures necessary for the control of the spreading of the infection [13,14,15,16]
Rather than check the card that could have falsified their hypothesis, they attempted to confirm it, not realizing that such a confirmation did not determine whether the rule was true or false [31,32]. Extending this finding to decision-making behavior during the COVID-19 outbreak, people might have erroneously focused their attention more on information that confirmed what they already believed, rather than on new evidence that supported a different conclusion

Summary

Introduction

In January 2020, Italian media and journalists informed the public about the alarming spread of a mysterious lethal virus, of the SARS family, in Wuhan (China). The recommendations about safety measures to adopt, to prevent infection, such as hand washing, face coverings, quarantine, and social distancing [8] were confirmed and disconfirmed several times; wearing a mask, for example, was sometimes considered extremely important and mandatory, other times useless and even dangerous [9,10,11] This lack of clarity produced a huge degree of uncertainty among. They lead to systematic errors, named cognitive biases In this manuscript, we first examine the main heuristics and cognitive biases that could explain some of the most common behaviors of Italians during COVID-19 that were problematic from a public health standpoint, such as going to crowded discotheques and bars, refusing to wear a mask and, in general, to respect the safety measures necessary for the control of the spreading of the infection [13,14,15,16]. We provide solutions to help people engage in more desirable preventive public health behaviors

Heuristics and Cognitive Biases during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Findings

Solutions