2021/05/12 by Serena Petrocchi, Sheila Bernardi, Roberto Malacrida +3 · 36 citations
Psychology · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · Medicine · #COVID-19 and Mental Health #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Empathy #Prosocial behavior #Social isolation #Psychology #Isolation (microbiology) #Distress #Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) #Pandemic #Population #Altruism (biology) #Public health #Social psychology #Clinical psychology #Medicine #Psychiatry #Disease #Environmental health #Bioinformatics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41598-021-89504-w
published in Scientific Reports 11(1), 10153 (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2021/05/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Health risk exposure during the global COVID-19 pandemic has required people to adopt self-isolation. Public authorities have therefore had the difficult task of sustaining such protective but stressful behaviour. Evidence shows that besides egoistic drives, the motivation for self-isolation behaviour could be altruistic. However, the type and role of prosocial motivation in the current pandemic is underestimated and its interaction with risk exposure and psychological distress is largely unknown. Here we show that affective empathy for the most vulnerable predicts acceptance of lockdown measures. In two retrospective studies, one with a general population and one with COVID-19 positive patients, we found that (1) along with health risk exposure, affective empathy is a predictor of acceptance of lockdown measures (2) social covariates and psychological distress have no significant impact. Our results support the need to focus on altruistic behaviours while informing the public instead of on fear-inducing messages.