Math matters during a pandemic: A novel, brief educational intervention combats whole number bias to improve health decision-making and predicts COVID-19 risk perceptions and worry across 10 days
Math matters during a pandemic: A novel, brief educational intervention combats whole number bias to improve health decision-making and predicts COVID-19 risk perceptions and worry across 10 days
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数学在大流行期间很重要：一种新颖、简短的教育干预措施可以消除整数偏差，以改善健康决策，并预测 10 天内的 COVID-19 风险认知和担忧
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发表时间：
2020
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Karin G. Coifman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Clarissa A. Thompson;Jennifer M. Taber;P. Sidney;Charles J. Fitzsimmons;Marta K. Mielicki;Percival G. Matthews;Erika Schemmel;N. Simonovic;Jerry L. Foust;P. Aurora;T. H. S. Seah;D. Disabato;Karin G. Coifman
在COVID-19全球大流行开始时，我们的跨学科团队假设，一种数学误解--整数偏差（WNB）--导致了COVID-19不如流感致命的错误信念。我们创建了一个新颖的五分钟在线教育干预，利用基于证据的认知科学研究，以鼓励准确的COVID-19和流感死亡率计算和比较。正如预测的那样，随机分配到干预组的成年人（N = 1，297）更有可能正确回答健康决策问题，并且相对于对照组参与者，他们在解决问题策略中报告WNB错误的可能性较小。条件对COVID-19风险感知和担忧没有直接影响;然而，干预组的人在10天的日常日记中确实表现出感知风险和担忧增加。干预并没有造成痛苦;相反，它增加了积极的影响。改善WNB错误可能会影响人们对未来健康危机的风险认知。
At the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, our interdisciplinary team hypothesized that a mathematical misconception--whole number bias (WNB)--contributed to incorrect beliefs that COVID-19 was less fatal than the flu. We created a novel, five-minute online educational intervention, leveraging evidence-based cognitive science research, to encourage accurate COVID-19 and flu fatality rate calculations and comparisons. As predicted, adults (N = 1,297) randomly assigned to the intervention were more likely to correctly answer health decision-making problems and were less likely to report WNB errors in their problem-solving strategies relative to control participants. There were no immediate effects of condition on COVID-19 risk perceptions and worry; however, those in the intervention group did exhibit increased perceived risk and worry across 10 days of daily diaries. The intervention did not cause distress; instead, it increased positive affect. Ameliorating WNB errors could impact people’s risk perceptions about future health crises.