Michal Ben Gal
Bibliographic details:
Zamir, E. and Teichman, D., ההתמודדות השלטונית עם משבר הקורונה – היבטים התנהגותיים
Governmental Decision-Making Regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic -- a Behavioral Perspective (September 24, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3698682 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3698682
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to legal policymakers throughout the world. This paper analyzes the decision-making processes of Israeli public officials in this sphere, from a behavioral perspective. This perspective helps understanding the judgments and decisions of political and professional decision-makers, and sheds light on the public discourse. After describing the challenges facing the government and the legal measures taken in response to the pandemic, the paper presents a theoretical framework for the analysis of governmental decisions from a behavioral perspective. Each of the remaining three parts focuses on one category of psychological phenomena that may influence governmental decision-making: the way people assess probabilities and risks; the unique effect of quantitative information (compared to unquantifiable data) and of international rankings; and the role of self-serving biases.
תקציר בעברית: מגפת הקורונה הציבה בפני קובעי המדיניות המשפטית ברחבי העולם אתגרים חסרי תקדים. רשימה זו מנתחת את תהליכי קבלת ההחלטות של קובעי המדיניות ת בישראל בנושא זה מנקודת מבט התנהגותית. נקודת מבט זו מסייעת להבין את השיפוטים וההחלטות של בעלי התפקידים בדרג הפוליטי והמקצועי, ושופכת אור על השיח הציבורי. לאחר תיאור של האתגרים שנִצבו בפני הממשלה והצעדים המשפטיים שננקטו בישראל בתגובה למגפה, מציגה הרשימה מסגרת עיונית לדיון בהחלטות שלטוניות מנקודת מבט התנהגותית. שלושת החלקים הבאים מתמקדים כל אחד בקבוצה של תופעות פסיכולוגיות העשויות להשפיע על החלטות שלטוניות: האופן שבו אנשים מעריכים הסתברויות וסיכונים; ההשפעה המיוחדת של נתונים מספריים (בהשוואה למידע שאינו ניתן לכימות), ושל דירוגים בין-לאומיים על שיפוטים והחלטות; והתפקיד שמשחקות הטיות לטובת העצמי.
Webpage: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3698682
Bibliographic details:
Collins-Kreiner, N. & Ram, Y. (2020). National tourism strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Annals of Tourism Research.
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a powerful and varied impact on the tourism industry. This research note, composed in July 2020, half a year after the outbreak of the pandemic, aims: a) to outline national Covid-19 exit strategies for tourism; b) to compare, analyze, and synthesize the current strategies; and c) to assess whether the strategies proposed by the UNWTO (UN World Tourism Organization) have been adopted by different countries, as no study produced thus far has considered both the strategies and their adoption. This note's broader goal is to better understand the pandemic's impact not only on the tourism industry but on policy implementation on the global level.
Bibliographic details
Kimhi, S., Marciano, H., Eshel, Y., & Adini, B. (2020). Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic: Distress and resilience. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 50, 101843.
Abstract
The current study analyzed repeated responses to the coronavirus. Data for the first phase was gathered during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Israel (T1), which included the overall lock-down of the Israeli society. The repeated measurement was conducted approximately two months later, on the initial phase of lifting the lock-down (T2). The sample size was 300 people. Results indicated four significant differences between the first and the second measurements: Sense of danger, distress symptoms, and national resilience significantly decreased, while perceived well-being increased at T2. No significant differences were noted between the two measurements regarding individual and community resilience and economic difficulties. The data indicated that the highest decrease in national resilience was accounted for by low respondent trust in governmental decisions during the COVID-19 crisis. The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the participants was determined by two indicators: level of distress symptoms and sense of danger. Path analyses showed that five variables significantly predicted these two indicators. Their best predictor at T1 and T2 was well-being followed by individual resilience, economic difficulties due to the pandemic crisis, community resilience, and gender. It was concluded that psychological attributes may help in decreasing the impact of the threats of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Webpage: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420920313455
Bibliographic details:
Kimhi, S., Marciano, H., Eshel, Y., & Adini, B. (2020). Resilience and demographic characteristics predicting distress during the COVID-19 crisis. Social Science & Medicine, 265, 113389.
Abstract
Rationale
Due to lack of vaccine or cure, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a threat to all human beings, undermining people's basic sense of safety and increasing distress symptoms.
Objective
To investigate the extent to which individual resilience, well-being and demographic characteristics may predict two indicators of Coronavirus pandemic: distress symptoms and perceived danger.
Method
Two independent samples were employed: 1) 605 respondents recruited through an internet panel company; 2) 741 respondents recruited through social media, using snowball sampling. Both samples filled a structured online questionnaire. Correlations between psychological/demographic variables and distress and perceived danger were examined. Path analysis was conducted to identify predictive indicators of distress and perceived danger.
Results
Significant negative correlations were found between individual/community resilience and sense of danger (−0.220 and −0.255 respectively; p < .001) and distress symptoms (- 0.398 and −0.544 respectively; p < .001). Significant positive correlations were found between gender, community size, economic difficulties and sense of danger (0.192, 0.117 and 0.244 respectively; p < .001). Gender and economic difficulties also positively correlated with distress symptoms (0.130 and 0.214 respectively; p < .001). Path analysis revealed that all paths were significant (p < .008 to .001) except between family income and distress symptoms (p = .12). The seven predictors explained 20% of sense of danger variance and 34% the distress symptoms variance. The most highly predictive indicators were the two psychological characteristics, individual resilience, and well-being. Age, gender, community size, and economic difficulties due to COVID-19 further add to predicting distress, while community and national resilience do not. .
Conclusions
Individual resilience and well-being have been found as the first and foremost predictors of COVID-19 anxiety. Though both predictors are complex and may be influenced by many factors, given the potential return of COVID-19 threat and other future health pandemic threats to our world, we must rethink and develop ways to reinforce them.
Webpage: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953620306080
Bibliographic details:
Kimhi, S., Eshel, Y., Marciano, H., & Adini, B. (2020). A Renewed Outbreak of the COVID− 19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study of Distress, Resilience, and Subjective Well-Being. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(21), 7743.
Abstract:
Considering the potential impact of COVID-19 on the civil society, a longitudinal study was conducted to identify levels of distress, resilience, and the subjective well-being of the population.
The study is based on two repeated measurements conducted at the end of the pandemic’s “first wave” and the beginning of the “second wave” on a sample (n = 906) of Jewish Israeli respondents, who completed an online questionnaire distributed by an Internet panel company. Three groups of indicators were assessed: signs of distress (sense of danger, distress symptoms, and perceived threats), resilience (individual, community, and national), and subjective well-being (well-being, hope, and morale). Results indicated the following: (a) a significant increase in distress indicators, with effect sizes of sense of danger, distress symptoms, and perceived threats (Cohen’s d 0.614, 0.120, and 0.248, respectively); (b) a significant decrease in resilience indicators, with effect sizes of individual, community, and national resilience (Cohen’s d 0.153, 0.428, and 0.793, respectively); and (c) a significant decrease in subjective well-being indicators with effect sizes of well-being, hope, and morale (Cohen’s d 0.116, 0.336, and 0.199, respectively). To conclude, COVID-19 had a severe, large-scale impact on the civil society, leading to multidimensional damage and a marked decrease in
the individual, community, and national resilience of the population.
Special issue of International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction: Cascading Effects in Disaster Risk Science: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives.
Edited by Daniel Felsenstein, Deborah Shmueli, Deborah Thomas
Published September 2020
Bibliographic details:
Perry, R. (2020). Who Should Be Liable for the COVID-19 Pandemic? Harvard Journal on Legislation, Forthcoming
Abstract:
The Article systematically and critically evaluates the potential liability of various “suspects” for the physical, emotional, and economic losses arising from the COVID-19 pandemic: the country-of-origin (the People’s Republic of China), international organizations (particularly the World Health Organization), federal, state, and local governments and officers, businesses, and healthcare providers. It concludes that existing legal frameworks fail to provide an appropriate solution for victims, primarily because each of the potential defendants can easily evade liability. The Article then proposes a new hybrid (international-domestic) regime, inspired by the international framework for the compensation of victims of nuclear incidents and by the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
Webpage: SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3697283 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3697283
On-Going research
Dr. Adar Ben-Eliyahu & Lihi Sarfaty, Department of Counseling and Human Development – University of Haifa
This study investigated the relations of parental meta-processes and self-regulated learning to their children’s self-regulated learning. The study is based on the notion that meta-processes and self-regulation are a core essence of resilience and crucial protective factors especially when coping with maladaptive living situations, such as that imposed COVID-19 pandemic. Meta-processes have been mainly investigated as knowledge and understanding of cognitive processes in the form of metacognition (Flavel, 1979), though recently these processes have been defined as pertaining to behavioral outcomes -metabehavior (Ben-Eliyahu, 2019) and emotional - metaemotion (also see Norman & Furnes, 2016). Although parental processes and beliefs have been found to be related to their children’s, there is not much work on how parents’ self-regulated learning and meta-processes are related to their children’s self-regulated learning. This study investigated the relations of these parental processes as well as the dynamic of regulation as they relate to their children’s learning.
The data includes three different times: May 2019 (pre-corona), April 2020 (first lockdown – distance learning), and June 2020 (regular at school learning after lockdown – “Corona routine”). Our preliminary analyses suggest that at home distance learning elicits slightly different dynamics between parents and their children that is captured by nuanced processes. Main findings suggest that there was more parental involvement with returning to the Corona routine as more associations were found between maternal processes to her child in June 2020 compared to May 2019. For example, across all times parental emotion regulation of suppression was positively associated with child suppression, in addition in June 2020 mother’s cognitive regulation predicted the use of child’s suppression. Similarly, while reappraisal emotion regulation predicted the use of reappraisal and planning (behavioral regulation) at school learning (May 2019 & June 2020), in June 2020 parent's behavioral regulation (planning) was also positively associated with the child's behavioral regulation. The findings suggest that during the first lockdown (April 2020), apart from reappraisal (emotional regulation), parent's self-regulation were not associated with their children's self-regulation.
Regarding mothers' knowledge of internal processes such as emotion, cognition and behavior, whereas pre-corona meta-emotion and meta-behavior was positively associated with child’s emotion regulation of reappraisal, Corona lockdown meta-behavior was also found to predict behavioral regulation (planning). This is in contrast to Corona routine (June 2020) in which only meta-emotion predicted reappraisal and behavior regulation. An interesting finding is that mother’s meta-emotion was negatively associated with the child's cognitive regulation only during distance learning (April 2020), but during and after lockdown meta-emotion was positively associated while meta-cognition was negatively associated with the use of suppression emotion regulation.
In looking at parent-child dynamics, co-regulation was positively associated with emotion regulation reappraisal and planning at all times, but predicted math success only during and after the lockdown. While other regulation - giving instructions to the child was negatively related to math achievements and was positively associated with child's attentional regulation. That is, the child is required to have more instructions to regulate attention, but less instruction by the mother predicted math achievement and planning (behavioral regulation). This is in contrast to co-regulation which was positively associated with math achievements but negatively associated with child's attentional regulation. When we asked the mothers about their emotions during the lockdown and Corona routine, we found that while there were no differences in reported negative emotions between the two periods, positive emotion (happy, relaxed, enthusiastic) increased when the children returned to school after lockdown (June 2020).
מחקר בהתהוות
ד"ר אדר בן-אליהו וליהי צרפתי, החוג לייעוץ והתפתחות האדם - אוניברסיטת חיפה
מחקר זה חקר את היחסים בין תהליכי- מטא ויכולת ויסות עצמי בלמידה של אימהות לבין ויסות עצמי בלמידה של ילדיהם בכיתות א-ג. המחקר מבוסס על התפיסה כי תהליכי-מטא וויסות עצמי הם בסיס לחוסן נפשי ולגמישות אשר מהווים גורמי חוסן הכרחיים במיוחד כאשר מתמודדים עם מצבי חיים שדורשים הסתגלות רבה, בדומה לאלה הפוקדים את העולם בעקבות מגפת נגיף הקורונה COVID19 . בנוסף, בחנו את הדינמיקה בין אם לילד בעת למידה מתוך הסתכלות על האופן שבו האם תומכת בלמידה, דרך עידוד חשיבה (ויסות הדדי) או על ידי מתן הוראות (ויסות אחר).
נתוני המחקר בוחנים שלוש תקופות זמן: מאי 2019 (טרום קורונה), אפריל 2020 (סגר ראשון - למידה מרחוק) ויוני 2020 (לאחר חזרה לבית הספר "שגרת קורונה"). מניתוחים ראשוניים עולה כי למידה מרחוק מייצרת דינמיקה שונה במקצת בין ההורים לילדיהם. יש דמיון בין תקופת טרום קורונה לשגרת קורונה יותר מאשר לתקופת הסגר בלמידה מרחוק.
ממצאים עיקריים מצביעים על כך שיש יותר מעורבות הורית במהלך שגרת הקורונה, לכן נמצאו יותר קשרים ביוני 2020 לעומת מאי 2019. לדוגמא, בעוד שבמהלך כל תקופות המחקר ויסות רגשי של ההורה מסוג של הדחקת רגשות היה בקשר חיובי עם הדחקת רגשות אצל הילד, ביוני 2020 גם ויסות קוגניטיבי של ההורה ניבא את השימוש בהדחקת רגשות אצל הילד. באופן דומה, בעוד שהערכה מחדש של האם כוויסות רגשי ניבא את השימוש בהערכה מחדש ואת התכנון (ויסות התנהגות) אצל הילד במהלך טרום קורונה ובשגרת קורונה, ביוני 2020 גם ויסות התנהגות (תכנון) של ההורה היה בקשר חיובי עם ויסות התנהגותי (תכנון) של הילד. הממצאים מצביעים על כך שמלבד הערכה מחדש (ויסות רגשי), יכולות הוויסות של ההורה לא נמצאו כמנבאים את יכולותיהם של ילדיהם במהלך הסגר הראשון (אפריל 2020).
לגבי הידע שיש לאמהות אודות תהליכים פנימיים כגון רגש, קוגניציה והתנהגות, נמצא שבעוד שבטרום הקורונה מטא-רגש ומטא-התנהגות היו בקשר חיובי עם ויסות רגשי של הילד מסוג של הערכה מחדש, בזמן הקורונה (אפריל 2020) מטא-התנהגות נמצא כמנבא הערכה מחדש וויסות התנהגות (תכנון). זאת לעומת שגרת הקורונה (יוני 2020), במהלכה רק מטא-רגש ניבא הערכה מחדש וויסות התנהגות. ממצא מעניין נוסף הוא שמטא-רגש של האם היה בקשר שלילי עם ויסות קוגניטיבי של הילד במהלך הלמידה מרחוק בלבד (אפריל 2020), אך במהלך הסגר ולאחריו מטא-רגש היה בקשר חיובי עם שימוש בהדחקה (ויסות רגשי) של הילד ומטא-קוגניציה בקשר שלילי עם שימוש בהדחקה.
בהסתכלות קרובה יותר על הדינמיקה בין אם-ילד, ויסות הדדי היה בקשר חיובי עם ויסות רגשי מסוג של הערכה מחדש ותכנון של הילד לאורך כל תקופות המחקר, אך ניבא הצלחה בחשבון רק במהלך הסגר ולאחריו. בעוד שוויסות אחר (מתן הוראות לילד) היה בקשר שלילי עם הישגים בחשבון ובקשר חיובי עם ויסות קשבי של הילד, כלומר, הילד נדרש ליותר הוראות לווסת את הקשב, אך פחות הוראות מהאם ניבאו את הישגיו בחשבון וגם את השימוש בתכנון (ויסות התנהגות), ויסות הדדי היה בקשר חיובי עם הישגים בחשבון אך בקשר שלילי עם ויסות קשבי של הילד. כאשר שאלנו אמהות לגבי הרגש שלהן במהלך הסגר ובתקופת שגרת הקורונה, מצאנו שבעוד שלא היו הבדלים בחוויית הרגש השלילי בין שתי התקופות, הרגש החיובי עלה כאשר הילדים חזרו לבית הספר לאחר הסגר (יוני 2020).
Bibliographic details:
Fischer, I., Avrashi, S., Oz, T., Fadul, R., Gutman, K., Rubenstein, D., Kroliczak, G., Goerg, S. and Glöckner, A. (2020). The behavioural challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic: indirect measurements and personalized attitude changing treatments (IMPACT). Royal Society Open Science, 7(8), 201131.
Abstract:
Following the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the globe coerced their citizens to adhere to preventive health behaviours, aiming to reduce the effective reproduction numbers of the virus. Driven by game theoretic considerations and inspired by the work of US National Research Council’s Committee on Food Habits (1943) during WWII, and the postWWII Yale Communication Research Program, the present research shows how to achieve enhanced adherence to health regulations without coercion. To this aim, we combine three elements: (i) indirect measurements, (ii) personalized interventions, and (iii) attitude changing treatments (IMPACT). We find that a cluster of short interventions, such as elaboration on possible consequences, induction of cognitive dissonance, addressing next of kin and similar others and receiving advice following severity judgements, improves individuals’ healthpreserving attitudes. We propose extending the use of IMPACT under closure periods and during the resumption of social and economic activities under COVID-19 pandemic, since efficient and lasting adherence should rely on personal attitudes rather than on coercion alone. Finally, we point to the opportunity of international cooperation generated by the pandemic
Link to paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.201131