标题：What is the connection between stress, distrust, and non-compliance with public health measures? – A constructivist view of negative phenomena during the pandemic times
摘要：Non-adherence to public health measures determines how society copes with thenew coronavirus pandemic. In this study, we apply the personal construct theoryto answer why some people comply with anti-epidemic measures. The theory assumesthat stressful events in the pandemic situation invalidate anindividual’s worldview (individual’s construing). If the individualattempts to maintain this construing instead of its reconstruction, s/he mayapply the hostility strategy. For example, s/he dismisses information oropinions that are incompatible with his/her original construing. This leads toan elaboration of distrust and critical attitudes towards institutions and tonon-compliance with measures they order. We investigate this model by aninterview analysis with 20 respondents. The analysis yielded five categoriesshowing how respondents construe the pandemic situation: responsibility,criticism, distance from the subject, productive dialogue, and unproductivedialogue. Respondents from the category “criticism” were facing substantialstressful/invalidating changes. They maintained their critical attitudetowards anti-epidemic measures through a hostile view of those with differingopinions and a strong distrust in institutions and media. The other respondentsmostly complied with the measures. In their construing of the pandemicsituation, they took different perspectives into the account, did not experiencehostility, and expressed some degree of understanding to people with differentopinions. Thus, hostility could be a fundamental psychological principle topreserve a meaningful worldview in times of the pandemic. Hostility, however,leads to distrust, opinion polarization, and non-compliance with anti-epidemicmeasures.
关键词：COVID-19;stress;distrust;societal polarization;non-compliance;sociality;personal construct theory
