Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown on trust, attitudes toward government, and well-being.

By Chris G. Sibley, Lara M. Greaves, Nicole Satherley, Marc S. Wilson, N. Overall, C. Lee, Petar Milojev, Joseph A. Bulbulia, Danny Osborne, T. Milfont and 4 more. American Psychologist, 2020

642 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The contagiousness and deadliness of COVID-19 have necessitated drastic social management to halt transmission. The immediate effects of a nationwide lockdown were investigated by comparing matched samples of New Zealanders assessed before (Nprelockdown = 1,003) and during the first 18 days of lockdown (Nlockdown = 1,003). Two categories of outcomes were examined: (a) institutional trust and attitudes toward the nation and government and (b) health and well-being. Applying propensity score matching to approximate the conditions of a randomized controlled experiment, the study found that people in the pandemic/lockdown group reported higher trust in science, politicians, and police, higher levels of patriotism, and higher rates of mental distress compared to people in the prelockdown prepandemic group. Results were confirmed in within-subjects analyses. The study highlights social connectedness, resilience, and vulnerability in the face of adversity and has applied implications for how countries face this global challenge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0b8c623426cf6d6560d93af4d3012850d0c3451a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Applied Psychology

1. A. Hirschi
2. Kristen M Shockley
3. Florian Kunze
4. Sabine Sonnentag
5. Mindy K. Shoss
6. Guido Hertel
7. H. Zacher
8. C. Rudolph

In Health

1. Sabine Sonnentag
2. H. Zacher
3. C. Rudolph
4. B. Allan
5. A. Hirschi
6. Bryan J. Dik
7. Ryan D. Duffy
8. Anne Herrmann

In Social Psychology

1. H. Zacher
2. A. Hirschi
3. C. Rudolph
4. Florian Kunze
5. Kristen M Shockley
6. Sabine Sonnentag
7. Mindy K. Shoss
8. Guido Hertel

Citations in the corpus

• Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Big Five Personality on Subjective and Psychological Well-Being (2020, neutral): “These findings differ from the study of early stages of lockdown in New Zealand (Sibley et al., 2020) that found minimal changes in well-being but share some similarity with the United Kingdom experience (Foa et al., 2020) where positive mood declined when the virus started spreading.”
• Why are conservatives less concerned about the coronavirus (COVID-19) than liberals? Comparing political, experiential, and partisan messaging explanations (2020, background): “…evaluating the psychology of disease outbreaks is growing (e.g., Harper et al., 2020; Karwowski et al., 2020; Martin, 2020; Pennycook et al., 2020; Sibley et al., 2020; Zettler et al., 2020), we currently do not have many guiding theories concerning the interface of ideology and disease outbreaks…”
• Pandemics: Implications for research and practice in industrial and organizational psychology (2020, background): “…as well as to mentally prepare people for the long and challenging aftermath of the current crisis and future pandemics, have led to increased feelings of uncertainty and psychological distress among many employees (Anderson, Heesterbeek, Klinkenberg, & Hollingsworth, 2020; Sibley et al., 2020).”