Each scientist was first presented with a preamble and standardized prompts. The prompts were repeated during the interview.
My colleagues and I are interested in psychological and social change within a few years after the pandemic (e.g., political changes, changes in attitudes or behavior toward certain groups, changes in mental health). We are also interested in the wisdom people will need to master the pandemic -- i.e., attitudes, behaviors, or general strategies people can use to successfully navigate the challenges ahead. The specific set of questions I am asking each participant in this project is below:
Q1. If you were to predict the domain or aspect of social life where we might observe the most significant positive societal and/or psychological change in response to the pandemic, what would it be?
Q2. What kind of wisdom will people need to capitalize on for the positive change you refer to above?
Q3. If you were to predict the domain or aspect of social life where we might observe the most significant negative societal and/or psychological change in response to the pandemic, what would it be?
Q4. What kind of wisdom will people need to master to overcome this major negative societal change after the pandemic?
Q5. What one piece of wisdom do you think it is important to give people now to help them make it through the pandemic?
Themes below are sorted by topic and alphabetically. They start with responses corresponding to Q1 and proceed to unique themes throughout until Q5. In case the same theme appears in response to multiple questions, examples are provided for each.
some also mentioned in Q2, Q4-Q5
Definition: Improved ecology and other aspects of nature and one's environment, such as cleaner air, less pollution, paying greater attention to landscape around us.
Q1
-
There's no doubt that the biggest benefit of lockdown has been the impact on the environment, the air is cleaner.
Definition: being appreciative of / grateful for what one has.
Q1
-
People re-evaluate their ordinary lives and the strengths and their feelings of the gratitude towards family members or social networks.
-
We are probably going to be more appreciative of people we didn't appreciate enough before.
-
People are sitting with the details of their life, their families, their actual environment, their actual landscape, much more than they have done in the past.
Q4
-
As the Dalai Lama says if in the morning you wake up and you're alive, this is already so much to be grateful for. And this pandemic reminds us of this simple wisdom.
Definition: being hopeful and optimistic; includes believing in human ability, not panicking, remembering we will recover, realizing importance of expressing positive emotions.
Q1
-
People become more aware of the importance of the expression of positive emotions when they're in ordinary day to day interactions with others.
Q4
-
I think that one that is very important is to never lose hope and optimism, as the humankind has been able to overcome all kinds of challenges, historical, the macro level, that now, we learn about in history books.
-
We have to have a will to keep imagining what may be a better way of living and participate in the discourse and acting on that.
Q5
-
Historically, we have experienced these types of pandemics multiple times, yet we have successfully overcome these pandemics. So, I think it's very important to believe in our ability.
-
I think it's really important for me, personally, to believe in humanity, hope that they keep on hoping I guess, have a will to hope, that there's a better way of living into the future.
Definition: experiencing what is currently accessible, savoring positive experience (incl. small things), deriving pleasure from the moment and details of life.
Q1
-
Rather than planning a trip abroad that's filled with mishaps and standing in the rain and getting sick and potentially not having a lot of pleasure, but then deriving a lot of pleasure later when people give you social credit for doing that trip or where you can make it seem incredibly interesting. Instead of doing that people are walking to the store or making bread or discovering that the landscape around their home, whether it's urban or rural, is very beautiful.
-
I think that this uncertainty we have hovering over our heads all the time, has made us really savor whatever positive experiences we have, some of them social, some of them individual, and realize that they're special, that they're wonderful and we have taken them for granted.
Q2
-
We need to slow down, and just notice; notice things every day, the great gifts that we have in our lives that we really take for granted. I think many of us now are starting to keep gratitude journals to think, what are the small things up to the big things that we really realized that we should be noticing, first and foremost, that are so precious to us even, like I mentioned things that are small things like being able to sit outside with a friend, or hold someone's hand and hug people we have to slow down, to be able to do that, the better off we'll be able to really kind of foster that positive change
Q4
-
To me, recognition of the fragility of life. And certainly, the COVID pandemic is reminding us of that. It's really one of the greatest gifts that we have, as humans. That is, the abilities that we have. To our knowledge, we are the only species that is aware of our mortality throughout virtually all of our lives. And this appreciation for fragility contributes to a concern for the world, as we know it. It allows us to see what's important and what's not important.
Q5
-
My advice is that, not to be too panicked about it. We've been through this before, and just stay relaxed, enjoy the time to contemplate not being so overwhelmed by crowds of people.
Definition: having/developing the capacity to cope with difficulties.
Q1
-
I also think that individuals will newly embrace flexibility and understanding how to cope with loss of control, how to cope with isolation, to see the value of compliance factors that I think many people who encounter stressful life events learn, as they cope with crisis.
-
What some study have shown is that people actually acquire resilience during this pandemic, psychologically, and there were no drastic change in terms of people's experience of loneliness.
Definition: sustained or improved physical and mental health following the pandemic and factors that such improvements are contingent on.
Q1
-
couples who are able to be resilient over time also may do better in terms of their health, and general wellbeing.
Definition: the capacity to balance work and private life
Q1
-
This coronavirus pandemic is also affecting their social bonds and we can re-evaluate how the pressures that each social bond we have. Then, in Japan, the most positive changes that people can see is the balance between work and private life. In general, the Japanese businesspeople stay in their office longer time than other countries.
Q2
-
Work life balance. We need to decrease our work time, increase our family time. Companies should restructure their work culture so that employees can have better work-life balance. I think that's the wisdom we need.
Definition: embracing/using technology for remote interpersonal contact, including new technological developments.
Q1
-
Certainly, people who are middle aged and older are embracing technology in ways that they might not have realized that they would be able to do and do so quickly. Universities have switched very quickly to remote instruction, and individuals are communicating with their families and friends, across the country and across the world in ways that they might not have done so before the pandemic.
-
When this pandemic started doing things on zoom was kind of unique, and it was kind of interesting. I had a birthday party at the end of March, and we had 20 people on zoom, and that was kind of fun.
Q2
-
For the second question, the kind of wisdom people will need in order to work from home. My answer is familiarity with computers, teleconferencing, social media, and information technology in general.
Q5
-
And if I were young, and had a job as a waiter or waitress, I'd be trying to learn some of that stuff. So that I can be ready for the for the future, we're never probably going to stop interacting online the way we are now because it's so convenient. Learn about these things, learn about this technology, because there's going to be some money in it.
Definition: questioning previous ways of life (e.g., work, travel) and redefining what "normal" implies.
Q1
-
But with a pandemic, and with the change in work mode, people started asking questions like, is this essential? Is this necessary? Is this really a must? Is this travel a requirement? Do we have to travel to get this work done?
-
Many people are asking about the way our society works or the way my life works, what is working or not working. And that's not inherently positive, except that it sets up a frame of mind that makes it easier to change habits because we start to ask ourselves what should be different.
Definition: rethinking how we care for elderly, including calls for more funding/policies.
Q1
-
On the other hand, there's a chance that we'll think more seriously about how we care about the frail elderly and that we will force governments to enact legislation and think about putting more funding into these contexts in order to prevent what should have been a totally foreseeable consequence in terms of the effects of COVID-19 and long term care homes.
Definition: includes prosocial behavior (i.e., helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, supporting others, and volunteering), increased tolerance of others, being considerate of others.
Q1
-
I'm hoping that we're going to see a lot more community engagement from individuals after this pandemic. Early on in the process, we saw a lot of people joining mutual aid groups or other kinds of voluntary associations, people helping their neighbors offering to go and get food or medications for them, people actually started to speak much more to those people who live around them.
-
I think that might suggest that, in order to prevent the disease, people cooperate more. People are more likely to help each other, and as a result, increase the cohesion of the group.
Q5
-
Caring about other people, care about your family, care about your friends, help where you can without jeopardizing your safety. Helping other people, it's also something that makes us feel good, and is good for wellbeing. So, care.
Definition: paying attention to importance of interpersonal relationships, maintaining relationships.
Q1
-
Compared with before the pandemic, people during this pandemic feel more connected with the community. Tighter family relationships would be the most positive outcome of this.
Q2
-
I think there's a force in our society that says you need to separate yourself, but I think that's sort of the one obstacle is that look, it's okay to be friends with your kin. You can trust your kin and it keeps the network of potential infections smaller. So again, I think people will do it naturally. And the only wisdom would be, don't pay attention to your cultural value that you should separate yourself from your family.
Q4
-
What I'm saying is call your grandma. And just keep in touch with those relationships because there's just a lot of loneliness out there.
-
We'll need also to engage in reaching out to others when they feel distraught or when they feel particularly distressed, and people may need to reach out to their loved ones to ensure that they too are coping well.
-
And also, very important to maintain social connections and social support.
Q5
-
If we are to learn something from the past and from previous pandemics, we know that whoever was organized in a very tight communities, and has a greater change chance to go in those times without the significant, you know, byproducts if you wish, because communal organization is something that can provide for the very individual person, provide the psychological umbrella, and financial assistance in times that person and individual needs that assistance.
Definition: recognizing that we all share a common human experience / fate.
Q1
-
I think the number one piece of wisdom is that we're all in it together. And that has been bandied around but I think that it is really the case that it is important for us to protect our loved ones, protect our friends, protect their neighbors, and in doing so we will protect ourselves.
Q2
-
I think stressing the common humanity would help us enjoy this unifying effect.
Q4
-
This pandemic taught us that we are all biological beings, we are all vulnerable to the virus. So regardless of our race, gender, ethnicity, we are the same biological beings. I think that's the wisdom we need to have.
-
Humankind must come to understand that we share the earth's bounty and its vulnerability, both of those aspects of our being born.
Definition: prioritizing needs of vulnerable groups (e.g., elders), thinking more "we" and less "me" within your group, taking care of each other, doing what is best for all. Overcoming how we compartmentalize people as trustworthy or not. interpersonal cohesion, trust, "we-ness", sense that we are in this together.
Q1
-
I think the biggest change will be where people will look to their community rather than the central government.
Q2
-
The realization that what matters is the common good and not petty ideologies. That sounds simple. But right now, many countries or many tribes within those countries are focused on petty ideologies, ignorance of facts, ignorance of science, ignorance of ethics. And we need to shift their emphasis to the common good, doing what will help not just ourselves or our tribe, but what's good for all.
Q4
-
The main thing is the realization that to achieve a common good, to do what's best for all.
-
maybe this is a kind of a practice run to get us all working together, and then using the established connections to work on global warming and maybe other global problems.
Q5
-
It might be also a good time to reflect on how we might be able to contribute in helping not just ourselves to adjust and adapt but help the community as a whole.
Definition: being compassionate/showing concern for others, includes being good listeners and communicating warmth.
Q1
-
Probably one positive effect of tears could be that everybody will feel empathy for others who are affected more severely no matter where they live.
Q2
-
I think that people will need to recognize the value of flexibility and the value of compassion and the value of giving themselves a break
-
So, if that's part of what comes out of COVID for some people, as wisdom, I expect it will have some payoff in enhancing empathy.
Q4
-
People who haven't lost their job, people who haven't lost relatives, people who haven't lost friends. I think what they must do is show compassion and empathy, as it's time for those around us who haven't been as lucky as the luckiest among us.
Q5
-
So being friendly, open and compassionate to ourselves can help us become more open and compassionate to others and in the end, to get through these challenging times.
-
And that ability to get used to uncertainty is very difficult to have, to give yourself a little bit of self-compassion and your family members and your friends who are all struggling with this same problem.
Definition: proactive efforts to bring social change and raising awareness of societal shortcomings; engaging in policy making/civic government, activism, structural change, to bring about social change (incl. support for telehealth, police accountability).
Q1
-
This pandemic has underscored societal inequalities along age, class, ethnic, regional and gender lines. The pandemic has not caused these inequalities, but it's put a spotlight on them. Disease affects certain ethnic and age groups more than others, a woman's contribution to the economy is likely to be hit harder than man's, and those who have entered COVID-19 with ongoing major problems such as poverty, political instability, and corruption, will have a harder time coming out of it in one piece. Alongside of all this, we have also realized one more time, that we all depend on each other in our lives are interconnected in so many different ways. I expect and perhaps more so hope, that this picture will motivate us to work towards understanding why this pandemic hit certain groups harder than others. As a result, it will motivate us to pick up a stronger fight against the unfair distribution of resources and rights not just where we live, but much more globally.
Q2
-
Proactive efforts towards societal change may be called upon.
-
My hope is, optimistically, that will end I'm seeing a lot of positive change from this, in terms of policy in terms of civic and government involvement, and that we can try to do this together in a way that's not as divisive.
Q4
-
And finally, emerging out of the Black Lives Matter movement we will always need an accountable policing force to keep one another in check locally, and also internationally.
-
Staying politically engaged is crucial to capitalize on the positive stuff, I think that's also the case for these more negative elements.
Definition: process by which political groups and/or nations work together to a shared goal.
Q1
-
one place that we might see benefit, or something positive coming from this very difficult time is an appreciation, greater appreciation, of the need for collaboration at transnational levels.
Q2
-
Those that divide other people that attack other people, that increase political polarization, that vilify you people who disagree with you. My hope is, optimistically, that will end I'm seeing a lot of positive change from this, in terms of policy in terms of civic and government involvement, and that we can try to do this together in a way that's not as divisive.
-
Globalization essentially left behind many people. It simply because the wealth was concentrated on the people who capitalize on information, technology and that's benefited from globalization. [...]I f globalization is to continue, which I hope it will, all globalization must proceed by incorporating the poor and underdeveloped countries. Globalization must be detached from international business competition.
Q4
-
As moral decent creatures we do better by working together to combat a common problem, rather than to fight each other.
Q5
-
Benjamin Franklin [...] said, we must all hang together or most assuredly, we will all hang separately. This is a pun in English of course, based on the sense that hang together means cooperate or work in conjunction with one another, to achieve joint outcomes
-
If I were to distill it to one thing, I would distill it to the idea that lives are more important than ideology. that the future is more important than short term gratifications. That we should never lose sight of the effects of what we do, not only on our own lives, but on the lives of others around the world, and of future generations. And that preserving the world for the future is more important than the ideologies that inspire people to behave recklessly.
Definition: asking questions and thinking critically about information in a way that avoids bias; unbiased reasoning.
Q1
-
People started asking questions that they might not have even considered asking before
-
I think some people, and a lot of kids, are being exposed to how you think about information? How do you think about data? How do you think about evidence, and more to the point, how do you do it in a scientific way? What does science look like?
Q2
-
Some who may be more vulnerable than we are, and will need most of all rationality, the ability not to be influenced by our prejudices and our biases, but instead think reasonably and rationally but in a crisis that we find ourselves in.
-
And we must become experts and be able to tell which experts to follow, who has a sound voice and who is giving us information that's going to mislead and maybe harm us.
Q4
-
It's really reflecting on what we want to influence us. That really sort of asking in a careful way, what is influencing me? And are these the influences I want to shape my worldview? And I think for many of us we'll realize, no, I don't want my worldview shaped by kind of nasty human tendencies, I want to think better and be better. I think most people have that default response.
-
There are a lot of these suspicions and biases that are flaring up right now creating impediments for understanding that we're going to have to kind of tackle in a reasoned way.
Q5
-
Yes, people are getting sick, and some are dying. But understand that it's a property of the human mind to overestimate the problems and the danger and the downside.
-
A lot of the things that we're facing now a lot of the, difficult moral decisions are about meaningful things in both categories, trading safety, grandparents lives against things like reopening schools for children's lives, restarting the economy to save the livelihoods of everybody protesting in order to fight for justice. These are all sacred values, not secular values. And so, the decisions that we're actually making are difficult ones. I think the simple act of deliberation has become moralized. The fact that people are actually considering these decisions is seen as morally gross and I think that's a level of ungenerousness to the challenges that other people are facing.
Definition: learning from the mistakes made at the start of COVID-19, as well as history, implementing these moving forward; learning from past experiences.
Q1
-
This is maybe even more important, a means through which these challenges can be met. So, it's really been an unprecedented learning opportunity.
Q2
-
if we have the wisdom to critically self-reflect on the mistakes that we've made and to learn from them, then we'll be better prepared to respond swiftly and sensibly, and thoughtfully to future challenges.
Q5
-
knowledge of how pandemics have ended in the past in '68, '57, for example, the 1918, 1919 this is important.
Definition: pursuing sciences for higher education, as inspired by COVID-19.
Q1
-
I imagine much like a lot of my generation went into science because of Sputnik, a lot of people are going to go into health and science because of this situation.
some also mentioned in Q4-Q5
Definition: accepting uncertainty, adapting quickly to new circumstances, being flexible.
Q2
-
We need to accept the possibility that there is and will be a lot of uncertainty, we need to be able to adjust and adapt very quickly.
-
It feels like at this time of change, an important part of our mindset is to adjust and adapt, is to accept the fact that there could be a lot of uncertainties and that we need to handle and try to able to be adapted to deal with.
Q4
-
Flexibility. A willingness to walk away from what the economist calls "sunk costs." Yes, it really sucks to invest years in preparation for a career you'll probably never have. But I think the people who do best in dealing with the situation are going to be those who assess the situation accurately, and refocus their goals, those flexible.
Q5
-
Things might change so quickly; change by the day or by the minute or by the hour. And so, we need to be able to adjust and adapt.
-
And there are elements of my life and the world that are going to be a bit more uncertain right now. And that ability to get used to uncertainty is very difficult to have, to give yourself a little bit of self-compassion and your family members and your friends who are all struggling with this same problem.
Definition: acknowledging there may be gaps in knowledge and mistakes made, questioning what we know.
Q2
-
The issue isn't so much do we have the wisdom, it's do we think about what is wisdom mean for how we approach this situation? What do we know? How could we be better? It's not that we don't know the answer to what are the values we might aspire to, but as rather than we're not really aware of them in our day to day life, so the wisdom is really more about becoming more persistently aware of those things that we care about and the way we want to structure our lives.
-
And it'll be even perhaps greater tragedy if these individuals fail to admit their mistakes, fail to, to learn from those mistakes
Definition: gathering scientific knowledge prior to making decisions.
Q2
-
a huge amount of research that needs to be done. Rather than people automatically doing internet communication or automatically doing classroom education, let's have some idea what kind of subjects and what kind of people it would make sense for.
Q4
-
You just need to do the research and find out what kinds of teachers, what kinds of topics, what kinds of students are best doing online.
Definition: prioritizing in person communication, finding new ways to communicate emotion, developing and improving online communication, focusing on real time communication (e.g., rather than texting, having live conversation).
Q2
-
So I think this ability to be able to connect with people virtually, will help this positive change, help us connect, remind us that we can reach out and no you can't, touch your loved one, but you can find sort of solace in being able to communicate with them directly over video.
Q4
-
People are going to have to think about why something like face to face communication and touch, why that makes them feel better and trying to find a proxy that fits.
-
Recognizing and understanding the consequences of deindividuation. And that's part of the wisdom. The other part is to counteract it.
Q5
-
To try to support each other and still focus on those relationships, and to focus on that, and focus on real time communication, as opposed to being so tempted as we all are, to go to social media and to go to texting, and so on, which is an in real time, and it has those performative aspects to it and just doesn't seem to be as good for mental health as actually having a conversation.
Definition: providing/having adequate social support.
Q2
-
we also have to realize that we're more responsible for other people, for the well-being of other people, than we might know and like. We are responsible for each other's well beings, even for people we don't even know very well, for people don't look like us, who don't act like us, and who we might consider to be strangers.
Q4
-
And also very important to maintain social connections and social support. In the past, busy with our very, very varied and dynamic and highly mobile lives we were not perhaps cultivating as much as we are now.
Definition: focus on what's meaningful, and contentedness. Considering what we value and gaining insight into the meaning of our life.
Q2
-
What you hear people saying are things like, wow, time is slowing down, I can slow down time, sometimes too much, but that's an option that we have in our fast-paced lives. Wow, social interactions, and hugging people are the most important thing in my life, and I feel depressed without them, and I'll return to that. Or I don't need to shop and burn carbon fuels so much I think we collectively as we move through this pandemic, this panic and this trauma, we'll start to arrive at a set of core ethical principles like we tend to, and go forward with those more explicitly recognized.
-
The wisdom is really more about becoming more persistently aware of those things that we care about and the way we want to structure our lives.
Q4
-
A third piece of wisdom is that contentedness is a better personal goal than happiness.
-
I think that meaning making is a very important ability, skill, form of wisdom that we need to have to be able to write a story about what's been happening integrate this in the story of our lives, and who we are, and share those stories with others.
Q5
-
It is important to, stop and rethink about what we have defined as normal life as very normal or not. Was it normal to commute more than one hour a day? Or was it normal not to talk to your family members because you were so busy, or was it normal to fly frequently to other areas in busy schedule? Or was it normal to make a lot of consumption in a daily basis? I think this situation we have to think about what our individual happiness is and what is our societal happiness.
-
As we shut down and have this period of solitude, and which is hard, that people ask themselves what they're finding really meaningful at this moment, and to develop that as they go forward.
Definition: taking a step back and looking at ourselves within the social context. Psychological distance. A form of mindfulness exercise allowing you to put yourself/your issues into a broader perspective (e.g., of the issues concerning the whole planet).
Q2
-
Not social distancing, as we've seen, but self-distancing, and I think it's learning that you must learn that some of the ideals or values that define us, maybe aren't that essential to who we are. And once we've got to self-distancing, we may be better to interact with people on the other side, whatever the other side looks like.
Q4
-
It's really reflecting on what we want to influence us. That really sort of asking in a careful way, what is influencing me? And are these the influences I want to shape my worldview?
Q5
-
Remember you're a social animal. Remember that. You need other people to keep yourself healthy. And you need social connection to keep your well-being intact. And other people need you.... Remember that your biology doesn't only belong to you, you spread it around every time you breathe. If everybody remembers that they can have a good impact on other people or a bad impact on other people they can choose to be the kind of person who has a good impact, they can choose to be their best self.
Definition: being appreciative of diverse perspectives, considering the perspective of others.
Q2
-
Essential for wisdom is perspective taking, being able to see the world as other people see it so that you can be helpful to them.
-
The first one, is openness to others, as different as it may be. I think we should learn to open to others, even if they come from the other side, whatever the other side is.
Q4
-
And you have to balance different interests against each other, and that includes the interests of people who are not like yourself, people who are members of different so-called tribes. So, if you're in our country, a Republican, that includes Democrats, and if you're a Democrat, that includes Republicans.
-
It requires this notion of reflection, but reflection that's not as a clinician might refer to it, rumination that is, not cycling through the bad thoughts and focusing on those, but actually reflecting on and taking the perspective of other people and learning to ask other people about what their states are like and learning to learn about other people.
Q5
-
So, the first one has to do with perspective taking. For a lot of people, some bit of perspective taking can help. That is, what people have been going through, feels hard and the uncertainty associated with it feels hard and the hits that they've taken to their well-being their way of life, to their jobs, to the health of friends and family, it's hard.
-
Realizing that our problems are relatively small compared to what others are enduring might be a first step to motivating us help to change the conditions that has made this pandemic so bad for some reason. It could also be that having some perspective where we realize that for those of us for whom this is true that our problems are small compared to people in other groups.
Definition: balancing personal liberties (e.g., bodily autonomy) with the interests of others (e.g., protecting others from virus). MUST mention balance.
Q2
-
The pandemic is demanding that we find a way to balance our legitimate concerns about freedom and autonomy with equally legitimate concerns about security and finding the right balance between those two will require us to develop a kind of judgment, a situation by situation judgment.
Q4
-
We need wise leaders who can balance the values of liberty and privacy against the values of saved lives.
Q5
-
And so each of us has to sort of figure out for ourselves, and the particular circumstances we're living in and the people who depend on us and what they need, how those balances get maintained, how to balance our concern for others with what we need, and how to balance our concern with being able to be free in the world, with our concern about being protected and secure.
-
Before coronavirus pandemic, we defined some normal life as lots of consumption, lots of mobility and busy life we defined as normal. But maybe, it's kind of too much for us and also, we have to think about the good balance between individual level happiness and also societal happiness which can construct each other.
Definition: includes increasing authoritarianism, rise of power for authoritarian states, susceptibility to authoritarian influence.
Q3
-
What I would flag would be shortcomings and the capabilities and the prestige of democracies. So, this is a geopolitical point, but it's also a point related to domestic politics. The example of the United States faltering right now is so profound, and will be so profound for people around the world.
-
And the costs that come with deindividuation are things like not feeling responsible for one's particular behavior or being unusually susceptible to social norms.
Definition: allowing others to provide easy answers and steer us, includes demosclerosis. decreased trust in institutions and decreased political engagement.
Q3
-
One of the big ideas in there is demosclerosis, that as a state goes on, decade after decade, that it accumulates a stronger bureaucracy, more getting tied into special interests, who use the government for their own benefit, and prevent the government from doing its job to produce the general welfare.
-
Some people did know. and in some states and some provinces, and in some countries, they did anticipate, and they did a lot better. So I think they should be held to account. But I'm worried there'll be a lack of trust and, and the consequences of that can be very, very negative. It can lead to walking away from the political process, not leading to experts, it could lead to a lot of things short of violence and that are negative- not voting.
-
The most negative change that I've observed during this pandemic is a loss of faith and trust in the institutions and governments and organizations in our lives.
Definition: includes geopolitical tensions, intergroup conflict, internal political violence, political polarization.
Q3
-
We're all asking what comes next? What does this mean for the way our society is structured? Those are difficult questions. And who poses the answers to those questions? Is it the case that autocratic leaders might answer those questions for us, might give us an easy answer where the answer is essentially, it's because of them, it's because of the out group. We know that people can be really easy pulled into these kinds of intergroup conflicts.
-
The other is wars promoted by groups who are exploiting weakened military and legal resistance that internal political systems create potentiating the possibility for internal political violence.
Definition: developing mistrust towards outgroups, people who look and think differently, and strangers.
Q3
-
I think there's going to be more ethnocentrism, not necessarily ethnic, but kind of, geocentric, there's going to be more geocentrism. We're going to like the people around us and be averse to hanging out with people from faraway foreign places.
-
my concern is that there's going to be this persistent, lasting wariness of interactions with other people, especially strangers. that represents a low-level erosion of interpersonal trust and erosion of social capital.
Definition: developing biased opinions of others, xenophobia, discrimination on basis of race.
Q3
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And there's an opportunity, unfortunately, for increased racism in certain cases. Consequently, stereotypes, prejudices against other group members might arise.
Definition: lower quality interactions (online vs face to face), social isolation, reduced work interactions, being wary of interacting with others; deindividuation, ignoring unfamiliar people.
Q3
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The negative change that I worry about is that people will slowly begin to ignore unfamiliar people within their social network.
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But I can see people at one another's throats in a few months, rather than looking to provide aid. I think we have to really, really worry about the anti-social consequences, immoral consequences that could arise if the situation gets desperate enough.
Definition: decreased sense of responsibility and increased self-centeredness.
Q3
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When people are threatened, when people perceive real danger, they kind of pull in, and they focus entirely on themselves.
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As people become more socially distanced and isolated, they may lose some of the skills of face to face interaction. They may start to become more in their own heads, and less adept at connecting to other people.
Definition: becoming cynical and pessimistic.
Q3
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Cynicism and a sense of despair are certainly growing in some quarters.
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So one of the negative things that we have to be cautious of is not letting, or being shown, about what's going on in the world, to mislead us about how people behave, we can become cynics when a lot of people are acting in a very non cynical, very cooperative way.
Definition: increased mistrust & skepticism in science & data.
Q3
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It is this suspicion of science and the suspicion of data, that we have strong ways of understanding this epidemic that have really been undermined in the United States by kind of this suspicion that pandemics elicit that's very worrisome.
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Skepticism about the efficacy of science.
Definition: includes black and white thinking & belief in conspiracy theories.
Q3
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Research shows that when we are faced with a threat of death, or with some greater uncertainty, we might stop thinking critically and we might start behaving in more irrational ways.
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This pandemic might encourage further growth of black and white thinking, conspiracy theories, prejudice and social antagonism.
Definition: media driven misperception of reality, spread of misinformation (e.g., fake news).
Q3
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I don't know how many videos I've seen of people massively upset because you've been asked to wear masks in the local supermarket. They're outrageous. They can make you angry. But they could also give you a tilted view of what's really going on with people, what people are really doing. You may focus on the person not wearing the mask and being upset, but you may not notice all the other people in the store wearing the mask that they've been asked to wear.
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So one of the negative things that we have to be cautious of is not letting, or being shown, about what's going on in the world, to mislead us about how people behave, we can become cynics when a lot of people are acting in a very non cynical, very cooperative way.
Definition: decreased happiness, health, increased psychological distress, increased mental health crisis.
Q3
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A lot of people are experiencing a lasting hit on their health and well-being.
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I just saw today, from those who administer the General Social Survey, they sample in May, looking at happiness and happiness is at a 50-year low.
Definition: poor autobiographical memory due to restricted movement/the pandemic and subsequent inability to differentiate contexts and feelings in one's life.
Q3
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lots of folks have told me that they feel like one event just blends into the other, blends in together in their memory. And I worry that we may wind up with a kind of collective fog in our memories for these couple of years.
Definition: implies a sense of hopelessness, including existential despair, distinct from mental health decline
Q3
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I'm mostly worried about despair at a social and psychological level.
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Fear of socializing and being out that many people probably have some sort of existential despair about the fate of society and humanity.
Definition: includes psychological consequences of social isolation.
Q3
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But if they have no such kind of relationship and they feel lonely, then this kind of change also worsen their feeling of the loneliness.
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But I am concerned about isolation and the psychological consequences of isolation and the societal consequences of isolation.
Definition: decline in quality of intimate relationships with one's partner, break-ups, conflict in relationship domain/close others. IG/OT Comment: Keep an eye out for close relationships that are not intimate (e.g., family/close friends) being mentioned in other entries.
Q3
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We know from many research studies that when people are faced with stress that comes from outside the relationship, such as financial or job stress, they're more likely to interact with their partner in ways that are potentially damaging to the relationship. They're more likely to be overly critical, or argue, to blame their partner to find it harder to listen to their partner's concerns and understand their partner's perspective. And over time, they may become less satisfied with their relationship and may even break up. So, couples who are most vulnerable, those facing the most severe economic hardship, also may suffer the most damage to their relationships over the long term.
Definition: derailed career plans and greater competition, rethinking career goals.
Q3
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Graduate students are going to find it vastly more difficult to launch their academic careers. Many graduate students devoting three or four or five or six years to graduate training, are going to find that it's impossible to get a job at a college or university. Undergraduates are going to find it much more difficult to launch the careers they've been trained for and had been hoping for.
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I know people who basically will have to completely change their profession, because they have jobs that are basically going to disappear. So a frustration to see your professional identity, go out of the window like that, because of a pandemic where certain things and certain activities cease to exist.
Definition: job and income loss at individual/family level. loss of profits, wages, earnings at societal level, includes economic disruptions.
Q3
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Clearly the economic damage is a serious concern, which could compromise our society for a long period of time and potentially stunt the careers in life courses of countless young people who are at critical stages in their careers and in their life development.
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anxiety around possibly catching the illness, and, of course around economic disruptions, which don't look like they're going away anytime soon.
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Many people are without a job.
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And I think in many cases, the income loss will never be recovered.
Definition: widening inequalities between the more privileged and less privileged people.
Q3
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And that's tragic. In North America, we're likely to see that inequality trends which have already been going in the wrong direction, are likely to be exacerbated by this.
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One of the most salient one is about the possibility that this pandemic is actually exaggerating initial inequality in a community.
Definition: learning loss in low income students, unequal education outcomes.
Q3
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But when the students go back to their homes, they go back to very different environments, the poorer students go back to the least enriched environments, have the least opportunities for this enrichment, and as a result, they see the steepest declines in their learning. Now, one of the worst things about this is that those inequalities accumulate over the years, which leads ultimately to a substantial achievement gap between the rich and poor.
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For example, from the standpoint of schools, when the children cannot no longer attend school in person, some schools that have more resources are able to adjust and change very quickly they started offering classes online, whereas for other schools, they might not have the technical support and resources to do that to offer classes online. Then what happens to the students? And even if the school were able to offer online classes, are the children able to attend those online classes? It depends on the amount to current resources that they have access to.
Definition: implementing online education without researching it, emergence of sub-par online education, without critical peer-to-peer interactions.
Q3
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It's internet education. There is something that goes on in a real classroom, that's superior, to what you can get, it's an immediacy, a clear reading of body language and facial expressions and so on, that gets lost.
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I worry that people will be using the internet education automatically without seriously thinking about it, which would be a big problem.
Definition: long term developmental consequences for children (e.g., social, educational).
Q3
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That's a real concern. I know that there are parents who are worried about the long-term consequences for this very fearful period on their children. Parents that I know are worried that their children will grow up with an increasing, greater sense of mistrust and fear of other people.
some also mentioned in Q5
Definition: behaving in tune with the circumstances at hand, includes being in touch with the norms of the society. Contextualizing one's memories to ensure they remain distinct.
Q4
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I think kind of the wisdom necessary, maybe is something like this, some sort of effort for cognitive strategy of compartmentalizing the risk of infection. So that even if I'm reminded that a casual social interaction brings with it some potential risk of disease transmission, I resist the tendency to over generalize that appraisal to simply view this person as a non-trustworthy person.
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We need to master sensitivity to the very important role played by context in human psychology. The context in which interactions between individuals, between groups take place determines to a great extent what these interactions mean to us, and what they do to us, and this we cannot ignore and should not ignore when it comes to how we configure life in the future.
Definition: not losing sight of the effects of what we do on future generations, maintaining a long-term rather than short-term future perspective with regards to goals and outcomes.
Q4
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You have to look at long term interests, as well as short term ones. And that's proven hard for people to do. You have to look and say, what effect will this have on not only me when I'm older, but on my children and my grandchildren and other people's kids as well.
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We still need to really come together as communities discuss what happened, across multiple levels, whether its political, economic, cultural, so that we can learn from our mistakes and plan for what we can do better next time we face a collective threat.
Q5
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The future is more important than short term gratifications. That we should never lose sight of the effects of what we do, not only on our own lives, but on the lives of others around the world, and of future generations.
Definition: having the capacity to accept/tolerate delay/trouble/suffering without getting angry or upset; being patient.
Q4
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The first is patience. These things are not going to reverse overnight. Even if we get government leaders who are more competent and more willing to trust and heed science, they're not going to just magically come in and make everything all right again, it's going to take a lot of time to restore the infrastructure and the base that's necessary for people to have trust in our institutions.
Q5
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Patience and resilience are the two core components of wisdom, which I think we should all try to rely on in the coming months.
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People need to recognize that this too will pass. But one has to be patient. It's not going to pass just because we want it to pass.
Definition: having a sense of awareness of the people around us (e.g., being aware who we are interacting with, noticing others and their struggles).
Q4
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An important first step is the sense of awareness. We need to be aware of the fact that although some of us might be adapting and adjusting comfortably to these changes, there are people who are struggling when trying to adapt.
Definition: recognizing & addressing inequalities in society, both as individuals and/or as a society.
Q4
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But at the same time, in the long term, it's very important to try to reduce wealth disparity and racial discrimination. Since, it's a really the weak spot of society, which is being attacked by the virus.
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Humankind must come to understand that we share the earth's bounty and its vulnerability, both of those aspects of our being born. Secondly, good fortune is not fairly distributed locally, nationally or internationally ever and never has been.
Q5
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the most important part is now that we are from, you know, personal level, but also from the political and collective level, make sure that this last third that has suffered the most, will not bear all the costs of the pandemic. And that's something where we are all obliged to fight to programs to help them to give them financial aid, but also to give them the needed resources so that they can also feel more empowered to help themselves
Definition: establishing a sense of agency---i.e., the ability to intentionally change the environment---and mastery/control of one's day to day life; framing pandemic as a manageable challenge.
Q5
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I think finding small ways in which we can hold on to that feeling of having some sort of control would help us get through these difficult times.
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One of the things you have to do is, have something that you want to get out of bed for, a lot of that has been taken away from us, whether it's work or social life or whatever. You have to have a reason to get up, a reason to look forward to the day and that might require that you indulge in new activities.
Definition: includes following public health guidelines (e.g., physical distancing).
Q5
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If we think about it as temporary, and we have hope, that it can give us the patience that we need to do what's right now, and right now, it means basically following rules that will keep us safe.
Definition: clarity and consistent public health communication as well as public risk awareness.
Q5
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Public health officials have said things that when they said them, I knew they were wrong in most cases, they come back and say, "oh, I'm so sorry about that, actually masks are a good thing, so sorry."
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The most important thing is, what can I do that's safe. And, unfortunately, our public health people have been all over the map.
Definition: believing in science and taking experts seriously.
Q5
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But science and the institutions that sustain science are self-correcting in a way that no other sources of information and advice are. So, take the science and the scientists seriously.