Partisan Differences in Physical Distancing Predict Infections and Mortality During the Coronavirus Pandemic

10.31234/osf.io/4bpny

COVID-19 is posing challenges larger challenges in terms of human rights including health rights of women and children. Since the mandatory lockdown has been imposed, violence against women is exponentially rising world over. Several countries have enacted special policies, laws and programs to deal with violence against women in homes. However, India which since the 90s has witnessed widening inequalities since the policy of Liberalization, Globalization and Privatization has been introduced, right now is again facing the disastrous impact due to coronavirus. The pandemic is making adverse gender impact in two ways – 1) Middle- or upper-class women facing abuse in homes during the lockdown and 2) Poor women who have no homes or are surviving in slums or those on the roads walking back home or those awaiting in villages for migrant men to come back. The National Commission for Women has reported a rise of 94 percent in complaint cases where women have been abused in their homes during lockdown. Also, another aspect that has not received attention is increasing number of cases where migrant women, along with men, are walking hundreds of miles, some in their advanced stage of pregnancy along with their children, without food. Some are being forced to deliver babies on the roadside while others are receiving the devastating news of migrant men being dead while walking on roads. Deprivation and denial of health and other services to women and children during the COVID crisis is aggravating the disaster. Therefore, almost half a billion women are at risk in India due to the pandemic. Yet, the state has not made any comprehensive COVID response plan to tackle these challenges. Neither any formal statement is being issued to declare domestic violence as an essential service nor plans have been made to support pregnant women workers walking hundreds of miles without food and water with their children. Rather, the state after 40 days of lockdown, while easing down the restrictions, opened the liquor shops as a first step. In doing so, earning revenue is prioritized over genuine serious concerns of women. This is despite of the fact that the women’s movement has shown evidences that consumption of liquor by men is proportional to an increase in incidences of abuse. This essay investigates the gaps in the state’s response in India to the increase in incidents of violence during the lockdown and argues that a robust comprehensive plan is required to address different aspects of violence women are facing in the largest democracy. The government cannot miss the chance to protect women from violence. In order to imagine a gender just violence-free world, the need is to impose the lockdown on the collective imagination that reiterate gender-stereotypical notions and to put the viruses of patriarchy and poverty in quarantine and isolation forever. By maintaining social distancing with the misogynist ideas and developing a plan to eliminate inequalities in all forms, gender justice and human rights could be achieved and the rights guaranteed under Article 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution can be reclaimed.

COVID-19: INDIA’S RESPONSE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE NEEDS RETHINKING

10.31234/osf.io/xczb3

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to assess the benefits and risks of a lockdown in Belgium, with focus on mental health. Consequently, projecting the cost effectiveness of remedial measures. METHODS For benefits; in estimating health savings, we compared Belgium (lockdown) and Sweden (lockdown-light) for COVID-19 related deaths, peak intensive care unit load and peak hospitalisations load. We also calculated the years of life lost (YLL). For risks; we assessed the mental health and wellbeing, using the most common dimensions: anxiety and depression. GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores were extracted from a survey and compared to a similar representative survey in 2018. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were calculated for and we assessed non-COVID-19 related-deaths from excess mortality. Cost-utility analysis was performed with a 1-year time horizon. Hence, considering the Quality-adjusted Life Years (QALYs), Incremental Cost-effectiveness Ratio (ICER) and the potential impact providing adequate treatment compared to standard care. RESULTS Lockdown versus lockdown-light gave no COVID-19 related benefits. COVID-19 related risks during lockdown saw an increase of 4,231 deaths; 667 extra ICU admissions on peak day, 3213 extra hospital admissions on peak day and 140 extra non-COVID-19 related deaths. Additionally, 140 extra deaths occured due to a non-COVID-19 cause. 1,034,365 (9,0%) of Belgian population reported increased anxiety and/or depression. Risk-benefit analysis; COVID-19 related deaths yielded an extra 3,145 YLL, total psychological burden of 104,515 (74,025-139,762) DALYs and the total loss of societal value is considered between €3.0 billion and €5.6 billion. Cost-utility analysis; ICER for psychological treatment for depression was €11,510/QALY gained. In total psychotherapy could create 181,714 (34,134-213,654) QALYs and a 1 year net benefit of € 5.2 billion. CONCLUSION We found no evidence that a lockdown versus lockdown-light results in less COVID-19 related mortality and morbidity. The Belgian lockdown created an obvious +104,515 (74,025-139,762) DALYs psychological burden in Belgium. Adequate investment in psychological help would provide individual relief and may improve a person’s immunological response. Also, within a 1-year time horizon, taking into account the loss of value in healthy functioning people, the net benefit is €0.9 billion.

Risk-benefit and cost-utility analysis for COVID-19 lockdown in Belgium: the impact on mental health and wellbeing.

Four decades have passed since the discourse on privacy had emerged. Nonetheless it has been claimed that Africans do not value privacy. Commentators in the field of data privacy argue that Africans live in collectivist culture. The latter denies an individual a private sphere for exercising the right to privacy. Despite the over dominance of this scholarship, there remains a dissatisfying lack of comprehensive explanation for the concept and value of privacy in Africa. Partly this is due to a fallacy that Africa is a static and unchanging society. Also part of this assumption though intertwined in the first set is the over dominance of the claim that individualism as such is a pre-condition for privacy to take shape and develop. In this article I refute these generalised claims and argue that privacy is an evolving concept in Africa. Although at the moment concerns for privacy are generally relatively low compared to the Western individualist culture, such concerns are emerging and privacy regulation is developing as a response.

“A Person Is a Person through Other Persons”—A Critical Analysis of Privacy and Culture in Africa

Fear of crowds in small spaces in the pandemic is spurring new norms and technological changes for the people-moving machines that make skyscrapers possible.

Elevators Changed Cities. Will Coronavirus Change Elevators?

Streets for Pandemic Response & Recovery |05/21/20202Even 10 years ago, reclaiming streets from cars to create space for people to walk and to bike was considered a radical—almost revolutionary—act. Today, people-focused streets are a proven global best practice and the first-line response for transportation and transit agencies during the COVID-19 crisis, from Berlin to Brussels to Bogotá and from Minneapolis to Mexico City to Milan.

Streets for PandemicResponse & Recovery

A month after easing lockdown restrictions, the state is still seeing a steady stream of unemployment claims, economic data shows.

Reopening reality check: Georgia's jobs aren’t flooding back

Using Social Determinants of Health to Fight COVID-19 and Get the Economy Back on Its Feet

The Emsi Health Risk Index

10.1080/13669877.2020.1756384

Judgment, decision making, and risk researchers have learned a great deal over the years about how people prepare for and react to global risks. In recent years, risk scholars have increasingly focused their energies on climate change, and as pandemic coronavirus has swept the globe many of these scholars are comparing the coronavirus pandemic with climate change to inform risk management. Risk communication research and the best practices developed from it are predicated on findings from the 1970’s to the present showing that there are structural similarities in how people think about widely divergent risks. Consequently, these lessons from risk communication of climate change (and from the canon of best practices) apply to the coronavirus pandemic. In the empirical comparison of student perceptions reported here, we replicate these structural similarity findings, but also find that moral concerns in particular deserve attention as a potentially distinct dimension of risk perception, on which different risks may also differ, as pandemic risks appear to evoke less moral concern than climate change. The need for communications to be timely, honest, credible, empathetic, and informative for useful individual actions is fundamental and essential for communicating effectively about the coronavirus epidemic. Some countries have heeded risk sciences, and are coping more successfully with pandemic coronavirus. Others have failed to implement these old lessons, which our data suggest still apply. While these failures may reinforce cynicism about political and public enthusiasm for accepting science, comparisons between the coronavirus pandemic and climate change may also foster greater aspirations for collective action.

Comparative risk science for the coronavirus pandemic

New research conducted by the Complex Human Data Hub suggests that support for the Australian Government introducing immunity passports in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is decreasing. In our survey conducted 7th May 2020, 61% of Australians showed little to no support for the introduction of immunity passports once they have considered the implications of such a policy, compared to 54.5% on 15th April 2020.

Decreasing support for immunity passports amongst Australians, but this depends on age

10.1038/d41586-020-01407-4

Report warns that thousands of scientists will also have to abandon research projects.

Coronavirus shut-downs pose huge threat to Australian research jobs

10.1007/s10460-019-09987-2

Wet markets, a ‘traditional’ form of food retail, have maintained their popularity in urban China despite the rapid expansion of ‘modern’ supermarket chains. Their continued popularity rests in the freshness of their food. Chinese consumers regard freshness as the most important aspect of food they buy, but what constitutes ‘freshness’ in produce is not simply a given. Freshness is actively produced by a range of actors including wholesalers, vendors as well as consumers. The paper examines what fresh food means to consumers in the Chinese market. It argues that wet markets create a sense of freshness that resonates with this culinary culture through their sensoria, atmosphere, and trust between food vendors and consumers. Together these respond to desires for and reproduce criteria used to evaluate freshness. Within a fragmented food trade system, wet market vendors have an advantage in offering ‘freshness’ through their ability to connect various wholesalers, agencies, and middlemen, and shorten supply chains. The paper is based on participatory observation, a consumer survey and in-depth interviews of various stakeholders in southern China, especially Sanya in Hainan and Guangzhou in Guangdong. This study suggests that this cultural construction of freshness creates a niche for small-scale players and ‘traditional’ markets in an increasingly concentrated global food system.

Constructing freshness: the vitality of wet markets in urban China

Social Media & Well-being

We tell the story of how the debate about social media and well-being has evolved. To get involved or find more insights and interviews, check out our website: https://www.psychoftech.org/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/psych_of_tech

How easy it is to order a book on an online shop’s website, how intuitive maps or navigation services are to use in everyday life, or how laborious it is to set up a customer account for a car-sharing service, these features and ‘user flows’ have become incredibly important to the every customer. Today, the “user friendliness” of a digital platform or service can therefore have a significant influence on how well a product sells or what market share it gains. Therefore, not only operators of large online platforms, but also companies in more traditional sectors of the economy are increasing investments into designing websites, apps or software in such a way that they can be used easily, intuitively and as time-saving as possible. 

Dark Patterns: Regulating Digital DesignPolicy Brief

10.31234/osf.io/r4p5z

We conducted a preregistered exploratory survey to assess whether patterns of individual differences in political orientation, social dominance orientation, traditionalism, conspiracy ideation, or attitudes about science predict willingness to share different kinds of misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic online. Analyses revealed two orthogonal models of individual differences predicting the willingness to share misinformation over social media platforms. Both models suggest a sizable role of different aspects of political belief, particularly social dominance orientation, as predicting tendencies to share different kinds of misinformation, predominantly conspiracy theories. Though exploratory, results from this study can contribute to the formulation of a socio-cognitive profile of individuals who act as vectors for the spread of scientific misinformation online, and can be useful for computationally modeling misinformation diffusion.

Factors Predicting Willingness to Share COVID-19 Misinformation

10.31234/osf.io/ubdz7

How do people behave when disasters strike? Popular media accounts depict panic and cruelty, but in fact, individuals often cooperate with and care for one another during crises. I summarize evidence for such “catastrophe compassion,” discuss its roots, and consider how it might be cultivated in more mundane times.

Catastrophe compassion: Understanding and extending prosociality under crisis

10.31234/osf.io/5wdb3

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Dutch government has introduced an “intelligent lockdown” with stay at home and social distancing measures. The Dutch approach to mitigate the virus focuses less on repression and more on moral appeals and self-discipline. This study assessed how compliance with the measures have worked out in practice and what factors might affect whether Dutch people comply with the measures. We analyzed data from an online survey, conducted between April 7-14, among 568 participants. The overall results showed reported compliance was high. This suggests that the Dutch approach has to some extent worked as hoped in practice. Repression did not play a significant role in compliance, while intrinsic (moral and social) motivations did produce better compliance. Yet appeals on self-discipline did not work for everyone, and people with lower impulse control were more likely to violate the rules. In addition, compliance was lower for people who lacked the practical capacity to follow the measures and for those who have the opportunity to break the measures. Sustained compliance, therefore, relies on support to aid people to maintain social distancing and restrictions to reduce opportunities for unsafe gatherings. These findings suggest several important practical recommendations for combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

The intelligent lockdown: Compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures in the Netherlands

10.31234/osf.io/mszw2

The current study had two aims. First, we tested three norm-based interventions to increase social distancing practices. Second, we examined five potential concerns related to COVID-19 infection as prospective predictors of social distancing practices over the next two weeks.

COVID-19 Social Distancing

10.31234/osf.io/ksj52

Objectives. To identify targetable psychosocial predictors of adherence to physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. Using a cross-sectional sample (N = 1003) representative of the population in terms of age, gender, and urbanicity in Quebec, Canada, we examined social, cognitive, and emotional predictors of adherence to physical distancing. Data was collected from April 7th to 15th, 2020. Results. Individuals were more likely to report adhering to physical distancing if they believed it is their civic duty to adhere (injunctive personal norms), that physical distancing will benefit others and the broader crisis (perceived benefits for others), and if they perceive that other people are following these directives (descriptive social norms). In contrast, perceived personal risk and emotional factors were not significantly related to physical distancing. Moderation analyses revealed unique predictors depending on health risk status, essential workers status, and urbanicity. Conclusions. These results highlight the importance of health beliefs and perceived social norms in shaping responses to physical distancing directives, and offer insights into ways to frame public health communications for different segments of the population.

Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Predictors of Adherence to Physical Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2005.03913v1

The spectrum of the non-backtracking matrix plays a crucial role in determining various structural and dynamical properties of networked systems, ranging from the threshold in bond percolation and non-recurrent epidemic processes, to community structure, to node importance. Here we calculate the largest eigenvalue of the non-backtracking matrix and the associated non-backtracking centrality for uncorrelated random networks, finding expressions in excellent agreement with numerical results. We show however that the same formulas do not work well for many real-world networks. We identify the mechanism responsible for this violation in the localization of the non-backtracking centrality on network subgraphs whose formation is highly unlikely in uncorrelated networks, but rather common in real-world structures. Exploiting this knowledge we present an heuristic generalized formula for the largest eigenvalue, which is remarkably accurate for all networks of a large empirical dataset. We show that this newly uncovered localization phenomenon allows to understand the failure of the message-passing prediction for the percolation threshold in many real-world structures.

The localization of non-backtracking centrality in networks and its physical consequences

2005.04081v1

Classification is a classic problem in data analytics and has been approached from many different angles, including machine learning. Traditionally, machine learning methods classify samples based solely on their features. This paradigm is evolving. Recent developments on Graph Convolutional Networks have shown that explicitly using information not directly present in the features to represent a type of relationship between samples can improve the classification performance by a significant margin. However, graphs are not often immediately present in data sets, thus limiting the applicability of Graph Convolutional Networks. In this paper, we explore if graphs extracted from the features themselves can aid classification performance. First, we show that constructing optimal geometric graphs directly from data features can aid classification tasks on both synthetic and real-world data sets from different domains. Second, we introduce two metrics to characterize optimal graphs: i) by measuring the alignment between the subspaces spanned by the features convolved with the graph and the ground truth; and ii) ratio of class separation in the output activations of Graph Convolutional Networks: this shows that the optimal graph maximally separates classes. Finally, we find that sparsifying the optimal graph can potentially improve classification performance.

Geometric graphs from data to aid classification tasks with graph convolutional networks

10.31234/osf.io/5ureb

The term 'trauma' seems to have expanded from a narrow usage (referring exclusively to extreme events such as rape and warfare) to a broad usage (encompassing almost any event that results in emotional distress). Today, individuals vary widely in the extent to which their personal 'trauma concept' is relatively narrow or broad. In this study, we explore whether this variation is important to individuals' actual experience when facing a stressful event (in this case, watching a disturbing film clip). Individuals with broader beliefs about trauma experienced more intense negative emotions and were more likely to report viewing the film clip as a personal trauma. Moreover, those who saw the film clip as a personal trauma reported more event-related distress (e.g., intrusions, nightmares) several days following. However, we find limited support for causality, with an experimental manipulation showing a significant effect on personal trauma concepts but mixed effects on other outcomes.

Does broadening one's concept of trauma undermine resilience?

10.31234/osf.io/y34cq

Network science has allowed varied scientific fields to investigate and visualize complex relations between many variables, and psychology research has begun to adopt a network perspective as well. In this paper, we consider how leaving behind simplistic reductionist approaches and instead embracing a network perspective can advance the field of parental burnout— i.e., a particularly devastating condition caused by a chronic lack of resources to meet parenting demands and characterized by intense emotional exhaustion, emotion distancing from child(ren), and a sense of ineffectiveness in one’s parental role. A network approach allows simultaneous investigations (and clear visualizations) of many variables and their interactions, integrates smoothly with prior family systemic theories, and prioritizes dynamic research questions. We also discuss potential future clinical applications, such as treatment personalized to a specific family.

Why We Should Move from Reductionism and Embrace a Network Approach to Parental Burnout?

10.31234/osf.io/w6nc5

In a complex digital space---where information is shared without vetting from central authorities and where emotional content, rather than factual veracity, better predicts content spread---individuals often need to learn through experience which news sources to trust and rely on. Although public and experts' intuition alike call for stronger scrutiny of public information providers, and reliance on global trusted outlets, there is a statistical argument to be made that counter these prescriptions. We consider the scenario in which news statements are used by individuals to achieve a collective payoff---as is the case in many electoral contexts. In this case we find that a plurality of independent, even though less accurate, voices dominates over having fewer but highly accurate information sources. In this carefully controlled experiment, we ask people to make binary forecasts and reward them for their individual or collective performance. We find that when collectively rewarded (compared to when individually rewarded) people learn to rely more on local information cues, a strategy that accrues better collective performance. Importantly, and in accordance with existing collective reinforcement-learning models and the Condorcet theorem, these effects positively scale with group size. These findings show the importance of independent (instead of simply accurate) voices in any information landscape, but particularly when large groups of people want to maximize their collective payoff. Speculatively, these results suggest that, at least statistically speaking, emphasizing collective payoffs in large networks of news end-users might foster resilience to collective information failures.

Pescetelli_et_al_Collective learning in news consumption

RT @Psychonomic_Soc: Starting next week... @siminevazire @STWorg @ceptional @psforscher @farid_anvari @stefanmherzog

In coming out of the pandemic the UK Prime Minister said “We are going to be driven by the science, the data and public health.Here we set out the data that inform any changes in healthcare activity. The data flows from NHS 111 calls, ambulance calls, through GP consultation data and surveillance data to hospital admissions and critical care bed occupancy and finally to deaths (the last to rise or fall). The page also includes links to National COVID-19 surveillance reports and care home data.

UK Data for Assessing COVID-19 Activity

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly influenced daily life all over the world. The present study assesses what factors influenced inhabitants of the United Kingdom to comply with lockdown and social distancing measures. It analyses data from an online survey, conducted on April 6-8, 2020, amongst a nationally representative sample of 555 participants who currently reside in the UK. The results show that compliance depended mostly on people’s capacity to comply with the rules, and the normative obligation they feel to obey the law. As such, compliance was not associated with deterrence or obedience out of fear, but rather with people’s practical abilities and intrinsic motivation to comply. The paper discusses policy implications for effective mitigation of the virus.

10.31234/osf.io/zuc23

Mitigating COVID-19 in a Nationally Representative UK Sample: Personal Abilities and Obligation to Obey the Law Shape Compliance with Mitigation Measures

Population structure is a key determinant in fostering cooperation among naturally self-interested individuals in microbial populations, social insect groups, and human societies. Traditional research has focused on static structures, and yet most real interactions are finite in duration and changing in time, forming a temporal network. This raises the question of whether cooperation can emerge and persist despite an intrinsically fragmented population structure. Here we develop a framework to study the evolution of cooperation on temporal networks. Surprisingly, we find that network temporality actually enhances the evolution of cooperation relative to comparable static networks, despite the fact that bursty interaction patterns generally impede cooperation. We resolve this tension by proposing a measure to quantify the amount of temporality in a network, revealing an intermediate level that maximally boosts cooperation. Our results open a new avenue for investigating the evolution of cooperation and other emergent behaviours in more realistic structured populations.

10.1038/s41467-020-16088-w

Evolution of cooperation on temporal networks

10.37016/mr-2020-017

Access to accurate and up-to-date information is essential for individual and collective decision making, especially at times of emergency. On February 26, 2020, two weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the COVID-19’s emergency a “pandemic,” we systematically collected and analyzed search results for the term “coronavirus” in three languages from six search engines. We found that different search engines prioritize specific categories of information sources, such as government-related websites or alternative media. We also observed that source ranking within the same search engine is subjected to randomization, which can result in unequal access to information among users. 

How search engines disseminate information about COVID-19 and why they should do better

10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007825

Biological networks are often heterogeneous in their connectivity pattern, with degree distributions featuring a heavy tail of highly connected hubs. The implications of this heterogeneity on dynamical properties are a topic of much interest. Here we show that interpreting topology as a feedback circuit can provide novel insights on dynamics. Based on the observation that in finite networks a small number of hubs have a disproportionate effect on the entire system, we construct an approximation by lumping these nodes into a single effective hub, which acts as a feedback loop with the rest of the nodes. We use this approximation to study dynamics of networks with scale-free degree distributions, focusing on their probability of convergence to fixed points. We find that the approximation preserves convergence statistics over a wide range of settings. Our mapping provides a parametrization of scale free topology which is predictive at the ensemble level and also retains properties of individual realizations. Specifically, outgoing hubs have an organizing role that can drive the network to convergence, in analogy to suppression of chaos by an external drive. In contrast, incoming hubs have no such property, resulting in a marked difference between the behavior of networks with outgoing vs. incoming scale free degree distribution. Combining feedback analysis with mean field theory predicts a transition between convergent and divergent dynamics which is corroborated by numerical simulations. Furthermore, they highlight the effect of a handful of outlying hubs, rather than of the connectivity distribution law as a whole, on network dynamics.

Scale free topology as an effective feedback system

What U.S. States Are Ready To Test & Trace Today?

As we approach the announcement of post-lockdown rules, how do managers, leaders and organisations create a sense of ‘psychological safety’ for their people?

A new psychology of work: workplaces in the post-Coronavirus era

(CNN)The economy is plummeting, and tens of millions of Americans need to get back to work. But at what cost? We know there are health consequences to keeping the economy closed, and some say thousands of Americans are at risk of "deaths of despair."But as states try to balance saving lives and saving livelihoods, experts say some arguments for reopening the economy now are short-sighted or flawed. Here are some examples:

5 common arguments for reopening the economy -- and why experts say they are flawed

RT @DrHannahWhite: The @instituteforgov * has distilled 48 pages into one graphic for you...

The great work from home experiment has begun. This shift brings small and large frustrations: my friend spent an hour trying to log in to his company’s email server, parents now have a second job keeping their kids entertained, and relationships may be in danger as partners spend much more time together. As you might be experiencing right now, there are downsides to remote work.But there’s a silver lining. There are some new skills we can learn from this forced remote work situation. Our limitations, like communicating virtually and feeling distant, might even push us to communicate better and come up with better quality creative ideas. Let’s explore how.

How Working From Home Can Amp Up Your Team’s Communication and Creativity

As the coronavirus crisis stresses almost every facet of American life, we’re featuring the stories of people who are struggling to stay afloat, finding unexpected financial opportunities or simply changing the way they’re thinking about money, the economy and our country’s social safety net. To do that, we need your help — we want to hear how the coronavirus crisis is affecting you economically. Please share your experience with us.

This Part-Time Consultant And Uber Driver Navigated Through Filing For Unemployment

Thinking about the scientific advice the Government received in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic, do you think the advice...

Drawing on research in the psychology of judgment and decision making, I argue that individual economists acting as experts in matters of public policy are likely to be victims of significant overconfidence. The case is based on the pervasiveness of the phenomenon, the nature of the task facing economists‐as‐experts, and the character of the institutional constraints under which they operate. Moreover, I argue that economist overconfidence can have dramatic consequences. Finally, I explore how the negative consequences of overconfidence can be mitigated, and how the phenomenon can be reduced or eliminated. As a case study, I discuss the involvement of Western experts in post‐communist Russian economic reforms.

10.1080/13501780600566271

Economists as experts: Overconfidence in theory and practice

Two consistent findings from the study of the fit between judgment of performance and actual performance are general overconfidence and the hard–easy effect, with overconfidence being higher with more difficult stimuli. These findings are based on aggregated analyses of confidence and accuracy, despite the fact that confidence judgments are individual and are provided at the item level. Furthermore, an important characteristic of item performance judgments that is ignored by traditional analyses is that the objective difficulty of any item can be estimated before it is administered to a person. We argue that traditional analyses confound possible bias in subjective estimates of the difficulty of items (i.e., confidence judgments) with variations in objective difficulty of items. We propose a multilevel approach to the analysis of confidence judgments, whereby the probability of a correct response is modeled as a function of both objective difficulty and subjectively judged difficulty. In this model, the intercept represents the possible overall bias (over- or underconfidence) in subjective difficulty judgments, after controlling for objective difficulty as well as variations across persons and items. In effect we are proposing a new, more nuanced, standard for defining calibration and identifying distinct patterns of miscalibration. We demonstrate the confounding effects of conventional aggregated analysis through synthetic examples and apply the proposed approach to the analysis of empirical data. Conventional analyses replicated the overall overconfidence and the hard–easy effect, but the item response modeling results failed to identify an overall bias in confidence judgments or a test difficulty effect. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

10.1037/dec0000111

An item response approach to calibration of confidence judgments.

Stop deifying "peer review" of journal publications: Peer review.  It is a critical part of scientific research and scientific progress.  Without it, science as a field might look like Fox News Stories or postings on Jenny McCarthy's web site, where ideas people have are given gravitas regardless of how ludicrous they are.  But somehow, many in the public and press, and many many scientists alas, have deep misconceptions about peer review.

The Tree of Life

This blog is the third of a series targeted toward exploring the impact of COVID-19 on education. It focuses on the learning environment at home, the potential parental role for continued learning and their association with reading skills.

Can we count on parents to help their children learn at home?

10.1001/jama.2020.7477

n March 19, 2020, California became the first state to issue a stay-at-home order in response to the evolving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It was quickly recognized that widespread diagnostic testing with contact tracing, used successfully in countries such as South Korea and Singapore, would not be available in time to significantly contain the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).1,2 Over the following month, additional nonpharmaceutical mitigation strategies, including school closures, bans on large in-person gatherings, and partial closures of restaurants and retail stores, were applied to “flatten the epidemic curve” and limit the peak effects of a surge of patients on health care systems. Yet, even as the benefits of mitigation bundles have not fully been realized, there are widespread calls to reopen businesses, given the immense economic and social consequences of extreme physical distancing strategies. Recently, public health, infectious disease, and policy experts have outlined recommendations for gradually reopening society using combinations of containment and mitigation strategies.3,4 Proposed containment strategies have followed the South Korean model and include rapidly expanding public health infrastructure for widespread testing and data-driven contact tracing, while ensuring that safe medical care is delivered by health care workers wearing adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), such as N95 respirators, medical masks, eye protection, gowns, and gloves. However, there is growing recognition that containment strategies that rely on testing will be inadequate because the necessary testing capacity may not be available for weeks to months, and in the US the ability to track, trace, and quarantine is unclear. In addition, countries where testing was not limited and containment was achieved, eg, Singapore, have seen substantial second waves of infection and mandated extreme distancing interventions that the US and other countries are trying to scale back. The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has included societal use of PPE, such as masks and face shields, in its recommendations for easing restrictions.4 Experience and evidence, even during this pandemic, suggest that health care workers rarely acquire infections during patient care when proper PPE is used and that most of their infections are acquired in the community where PPE is typically not worn.5 Thus, it becomes important to know if practice from occupational safety can be used in the community as a bridge to longer-lasting measures, such as vaccines. Could a simple and affordable face shield, if universally adopted, provide enough added protection when added to testing, contact tracing, and hand hygiene to reduce transmissibility below a critical threshold?

Moving Personal Protective Equipment Into the Community: Face Shields and Containment of COVID-19

10.31234/osf.io/tg7vz

Now that various countries are or will soon be moving towards relaxing shelter-in-place rules, it is important that people use a face covering, to avoid an exponential resurgence of the spreading of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Adherence to this measure will be made explicitly compulsory in many places. However, since it is impossible to control each and every person in a country, it is important to complement governmental laws with behavioral interventions devised to impact people’s behavior beyond the force of law. Here we report a pre-registered online experiment (N=2,459) using a heterogenous, although not representative, sample of people living in the USA, where we test the relative effect of messages highlighting that the coronavirus is a threat to “you” vs “your family” vs “your community” vs “your country” on self-reported intentions to wear a face covering. Results show that focusing on “your community” promotes intentions to wear a face covering relative to the baseline; the trend is the same when comparing “your community” to the other conditions, but not significant. We also conducted pre-registered analyses of gender differences on intentions to wear a face covering. We find that men less than women intend to wear a face covering, but this difference almost disappears in counties where wearing a face covering is mandatory. We also find that men less than women believe that they will be seriously affected by the coronavirus, and this partly mediates gender differences in intentions to wear a face covering (this is particularly ironic because official statistics actually show that men are affected by the COVID-19 more seriously than women). Finally, we also find gender differences in self-reported negative emotions felt when wearing a face covering. Men more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness, and a stigma; and these gender differences also mediate gender differences in intentions to wear a face covering.