The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.

/pdf/using-social-and-behavioural-science-to-support-covid-19-25vr5kyvxt.pdf

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response.

Actual and perceived social isolation are both associated with increased risk for early mortality. In this meta-analytic review, our objective is to establish the overall and relative magnitude of social isolation and loneliness and to examine possible moderators. We conducted a literature search of studies (January 1980 to February 2014) using MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Social Work Abstracts, and Google Scholar. The included studies provided quantitative data on mortality as affected by loneliness, social isolation, or living alone. Across studies in which several possible confounds were statistically controlled for, the weighted average effect sizes were as follows: social isolation odds ratio (OR) = 1.29, loneliness OR = 1.26, and living alone OR = 1.32, corresponding to an average of 29%, 26%, and 32% increased likelihood of mortality, respectively. We found no differences between measures of objective and subjective social isolation. Results remain consistent across gender, length of follow-up, and world region, but initial health status has an influence on the findings. Results also differ across participant age, with social deficits being more predictive of death in samples with an average age younger than 65 years. Overall, the influence of both objective and subjective social isolation on risk for mortality is comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality.

/pdf/loneliness-and-social-isolation-as-risk-factors-for-1j47bq05zi.pdf

Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review

Consider Facebookits human contact, only easier to engage with and easier to avoid. Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them. In Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. Its a nuanced exploration of what we are looking forand sacrificingin a world of electronic companions and social networking tools, and an argument that, despite the hand-waving of todays self-described prophets of the future, it will be the next generation who will chart the path between isolation and connectivity.

/pdf/alone-together-why-we-expect-more-from-technology-and-less-18kijbznsx.pdf

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

As a social species, humans rely on a safe, secure social surround to survive and thrive. Perceptions of social isolation, or loneliness, increase vigilance for threat and heighten feelings of vulnerability while also raising the desire to reconnect. Implicit hypervigilance for social threat alters psychological processes that influence physiological functioning, diminish sleep quality, and increase morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this paper is to review the features and consequences of loneliness within a comprehensive theoretical framework that informs interventions to reduce loneliness. We review physical and mental health consequences of loneliness, mechanisms for its effects, and effectiveness of extant interventions. Features of a loneliness regulatory loop are employed to explain cognitive, behavioral, and physiological consequences of loneliness and to discuss interventions to reduce loneliness. Loneliness is not simply being alone. Interventions to reduce loneliness and its health consequences may need to take into account its attentional, confirmatory, and memorial biases as well as its social and behavioral effects.

/pdf/loneliness-matters-a-theoretical-and-empirical-review-of-444rlh0w5o.pdf

Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms

To be successful takes creativity, flexibility, self-control, and discipline. Central to all those are ‘executive functions,’ including mentally playing with ideas, giving a considered rather than an impulsive response, and staying focused. Diverse activities have been shown to improve children’s executive functions – computerized training, non-computerized games, aerobics, martial arts, yoga, mindfulness, and school curricula. Central to all these is repeated practice and constantly challenging executive functions. Children with worse executive functions initially, benefit most; thus early executive-function training may avert widening achievement gaps later. To improve executive functions, focusing narrowly on them may not be as effective as also addressing emotional and social development (as do curricula that improve executive functions) and physical development (shown by positive effects of aerobics, martial arts, and yoga).

https://www.doctorbrunner.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Science-2011-science_interventions_-shown_to_aid.pdf

Interventions Shown to Aid Executive Function Development in Children 4 to 12 Years Old

University of Chicago social neuroscientist John T. Cacioppo unveils his pioneering research on the startling effects of loneliness: a sense of isolation or social rejection disrupts not only our thinking abilities and will power but also our immune systems, and can be as damaging as obesity or smoking. A blend of biological and social science, this book demonstrates that, as individuals and as a society, we have everything to gain, and everything to lose, in how well or how poorly we manage our need for social bonds.

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08091320

Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

John T Cacioppo is at the University of Chicago, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, 5848 S. University Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA. William Patrick is at the Journal of Life Sciences, One Embarcadero Center, Suite 2700, San Francisco, California 94111, USA. e-mail: cacioppo@uchicago.edu Michael Gazzaniga is a neuroscientist of distinction. He is also an alumnus of the Dartmouth College fraternity that inspired the film Animal House. Both elements of his biography are evident in Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique. The book reveals a vast knowledge and deep understanding of the human brain, yet it is written in an affable and engaging style that lets Gazzaniga’s loveable ‘wise guy’ persona shine through. In teeing up the deeply philosophical issue that the book will examine—whether there is a continuity or discontinuity between us and the rest of the animal kingdom—Gazzaniga eschews lofty allusions and asks very plainly, “What is the deal with humans?” Although Gazzaniga’s approach may be lighthearted, he contributes substantially to a debate that has a venerable history. Charles Darwin reasoned that the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. For most of the twentieth century, research emphasized the similarities between the mind, brain and biology of human and nonhuman animals, demonstrating that we are not unique in our use of language, tools, cultures, syntax or even teachers. Although granting that most human activity can be related to antecedents in other animals, Gazzaniga reminds us that a foggy mist is made up of “the same stuff” as an iceberg. “Just as gases can become liquids, which can become solids,” he writes, “phase shifts occur in evolution, shifts so large in their implications that it becomes almost impossible to think of them as having the same components.” Gazzaniga clearly sides with those who see something like a phase shift having occurred on our path to becoming human, yet he grants, “There simply is no one thing that will ever account for our spectacular abilities.” He sees “our aspirations, and our capacity to travel mentally in time to the almost infinite world beyond our present existence” as a result, in part, of the modular nature of our brains, combined with a degree of connectivity that is exponentially greater than that found in any other species. And yet specific benchmarks do emerge: the anatomy of the human throat that allows for speech, our ability to inhibit our emotional Are humans unique?

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Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

Are humans unique