Thinking of future as an older individual increases perceived risks for age-related diseases but not for COVID-19.

Dario Monzani,Davide Mazzoni,Luca Pancani,Gabriella Pravettoni,Patrice Rusconi,Marco Marinucci

doi:10.1002/ijop.12789

Abstract

Actively thinking of one's future as an older individual could increase perceived risk and risk aversion. This could be particularly relevant for COVID‐19, if we consider the common representation of the risk of being infected by COVID‐19 as associated with being older. Increased perceived risk could bear consequences on the adoption of preventive behaviours. Thus, we investigated whether increasing the salience of individuals' future as an older adult would impact on their perceived risk for COVID‐19 and medical conditions varying for age‐relatedness. One hundred and forty‐four Italian adults (M age = 27.72, range: 18–56) were randomly assigned to either a future as older adult thinking or control condition. Perceived risk for COVID‐19 and other strongly, and weakly age‐related medical conditions during the lifetime was measured. Results showed that thinking about the future as an older adult increased perceived risk for strongly and weakly age‐related diseases, but not for COVID‐19. The salience of the COVID‐19 outbreak may have raised the perceived risks in both experimental conditions, making the manipulation ineffective. In conclusion, manipulating future‐oriented thinking might be a successful communication strategy to increase people's perceived risk of common diseases, but it might not work for highly salient pathologies such as COVID‐19.

Highlights

Can focusing on a future time frame influence individuals’ risk perception? The social priming literature has shown that actively thinking of one’s future as an older adult could increase risk perception and risk aversion
We focused on people under 60 years old because they are more likely to have biased risk perception due to common messages conveying the idea that COVID-19 mostly affects older-aged people
While the two experimental groups did not differ in COVID-19-related perceived risk, perceived risk was significantly higher and yielded large effects in the experimental than in the control group for all the strongly age-related medical conditions

Summary

Introduction

Can focusing on a future time frame influence individuals’ risk perception? The social priming literature has shown that actively thinking of one’s future as an older adult could increase risk perception and risk aversion. Et al, 2016; Monroe et al, 2017) While these results suggest that actively thinking of one’s future as an older individual could increase perceived risk and risk aversion when considering financial contexts, no research has ever established whether this would apply to health-related risks, such as COVID-19 and medical conditions. Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, research has demonstrated that increased perceived risk for infection and infection fatality were positively associated with handwashing and keeping social distancing (Bruine de Bruin & Bennett, 2020; Czeisler et al, 2020) Given this empirical evidence, risk perception is often targeted by preventive interventions aimed at changing health behaviours. In light of these age-related differences, COVID-19 has been defined as “an emergent disease of aging” (Santesmasses et al, 2020, p. 1)

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Discussion

Conclusion