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How COVID is changing the study of human behaviour

The pandemic is teaching us key lessons about crisis, communication and misinformation, and is spurring changes in the way scientists study public-health questions.
  1. Christie Aschwanden

    1. Christie Aschwanden is a science journalist in Cedaredge, Colorado.

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Golden Statues at the Trocadero square near the Eiffel tower wear protective masks

National identity plays a part in how likely people are to support public-health policies such as mask wearing. Credit: Benoit Tessier/Reuters/Alamy

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jay Van Bavel, a psychologist at New York University, wanted to identify the social factors that best predict a person’s support for public-health measures, such as physical distancing or closing restaurants. He had a handful of collaborators ready to collect survey data. But because the pandemic was going on everywhere, he wondered whether he could scale up the project. So he tried something he’d never done before.

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Nature 593, 331-333 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01317-z

References

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