RAPID: Using Structured Introspection and Expert Perspective Taking to Increase Societal Considerations During the Coronavirus Pandemic

2019冠状病毒病大流行是一个前所未有的机会，可以研究在全球卫生和经济危机期间增加亲社会行为的行为干预措施。媒体、风险沟通和政策建议中有许多不同的信息，这些信息来自许多来源。公众如何看待和回应这些信息？在决定是否坚持保持社交距离和就地避难政策时，人们如何在可能较低的个人健康风险与更广泛的公共卫生风险之间取得平衡？这项RAPID研究在冠状病毒的背景下研究了这些问题。这次大流行是一个独特的机会，可以检验社会行为科学在改善公众应对Covid-19大流行方面的稳健性和相关性。具体来说，这项工作考察了鼓励人们反思他们关于亲社会考虑和良好公民身份的个人价值观是否会鼓励他们表现得不那么自私。这项工作还将研究在评估政策建议时，鼓励人们像一个公正的政策分析师那样思考是否会增加他们对社会距离政策的支持。这些问题将在美国进行为期六个月的全国性调查。同样的问题将在另外四个国家的两项国际调查中进行调查。这些不同的国家在应对Covid-19大流行和应对大流行的政策方面有着不同的经验。在一场正在展开的国际危机中，帮助广大公众减少自私，更清晰地思考，具有巨大的社会价值。这项工作的实施和沟通将直接影响公众遵守必要的社会距离建议，并改善公民参与政策评估。正在上演的COVID-19大流行是前所未有的，为检验在全球危机期间增加亲社会行为的干预措施的有效性提供了一个紧迫的机会。我们研究了在大流行期间，结构化的内省和采用专家政策分析师的观点是否会增加亲社会考虑。结构化内省是一种识别相关属性的过程，如亲社会考虑和公民价值观，要求人们报告这些考虑应该在多大程度上影响他们的判断、决定和行为。有组织的内省有望增加保持社会距离的意图和实践。专家观点采纳是一种程序，要求人们采取公正的专家政策分析师的观点，假设这是为了提高对与COVID-19相关的健康风险的认识。在6个多月的时间里，研究人员对美国的大量不同国家样本和其他四个国家的横断面干预进行了纵向研究，采用交错实验治疗。伴随着这些实验，我们跟踪了相关国家和公共卫生组织的主要媒体报道和政策变化。我们在一个具有高度动态的社会信息生态系统的自然环境中测试了这些假设，证明了理论的稳健性和超越严格控制的实验室设置的狭窄范围的含义。RAPID项目提供了两个关键的理论进展。首先，它复制并扩展了结构化内省和专家视角的新兴研究，将其作为减少判断和决策中的权重偏差的程序。其次，该项目在高度动态的跨国社会信息生态系统的自然环境中测试了这些假设。该项目展示了在全球危机期间应用的基础理论和影响的稳健性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Covid-19 pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity to examine behavioral interventions that increase prosocial behavior during a global health and economic crisis. There are many and varied messages in media, risk communication, and policy recommendations communicated from many sources. How does the public perceive and respond to these messages? When deciding whether to adhere to social distancing and shelter-in-place policies, how do people balance their personal health risks, which might be low, against broader public health risks? This RAPID research examines these questions in the context of the coronavirus. The pandemic is a unique opportunity to test the robustness and relevance of social-behavioral science to improve public response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Specifically, this work examines whether encouraging people to reflect on their personal values about prosocial considerations and good citizenship will encourage them to behave less selfishly. This work will also examine whether encouraging people to think like an unbiased policy analyst will increase their support for social distancing policies when evaluating policy proposals. These questions will be examined over six months of national surveys in the United States. The same questions will be examined across four other countries in two international surveys. These different countries have had varied experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic and with policy responses to the pandemic. Helping the broader public to be less selfish and to think more clearly amidst an unfolding international crisis has tremendous societal value. Implementation and communication of this work will directly impact public adherence to necessary social distancing recommendations and improves civic engagement with policy evaluation. The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented and provides an urgent opportunity to test the effectiveness of interventions that increase prosocial behavior during a global crisis. We examine whether structured introspection and adopting the perspective of expert policy analysts increases prosocial considerations during the pandemic. Structured introspection is a procedure that identifies relevant attributes such as prosocial considerations and civic values, asking people to report how much those considerations should influence their judgments, decisions, and behaviors. Structured introspection is expected to increase intentions and practicing of social distancing. Expert perspective taking is a procedure in which people are asked to take the perspective of an unbiased expert policy analyst, hypothesized to increase appreciation of health risks associated with COVID-19. Over 6 months, the researchers deploy longitudinal studies with staggered experimental treatments with large, diverse national samples in the United States and cross-sectional interventions in four other nations. Accompanying these experiments, we track media coverage and policy changes among major media outlets in the relevant countries and public health organizations. We test these hypotheses in a naturalistic environment with highly dynamic social-informational ecosystems, demonstrating the robustness of theory and implications beyond the narrow confines of tightly controlled laboratory settings. This RAPID project provides two key theoretical advances. First, it replicates and extends emerging research on structured introspection and expert perspective taking as procedures to reduce weighting bias in judgment and decision making. Second, the project tests these hypotheses in a naturalistic environment in highly dynamic, cross-national social-informational ecosystem. The project demonstrates the robustness of the underlying theory and implications applied during a global crisis.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.