Sondus Thabath
Pronouns: She/Her
Research Mentor(s): Terri Conley
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychology / LSA
Program:
Authors: Terri Conley, Leila Overbeek, Sondus Thabath
Session: Session 7: 4:40 pm – 5:30 pm
Poster: 94
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic brought many government mandates that restricted most human interactions. Many Americans chose to follow these restrictions dutifully, which helped mitigate the mortality rate from the virus and put less of a strain on the healthcare system. However, the lockdowns conceivably created several undesired outcomes for the US population, such as declines in relationship quality, social support, mental health, physical health, and economic soundness. In this study, we examined how people evaluate decision-making to prevent deleterious outcomes for other prominent social issues versus issues related to COVID-19. To collect our data, we surveyed participants, who were nationally representative of the American population, on how accepting they would be of the supposed trade-offs that occurred through the COVID-19 pandemic between saving lives from the virus and other negative outcomes related to lockdowns. In our survey, we placed them in the position of a policymaker and asked them to make a choice related to two adverse outcomes: they had to prevent one of the outcomes and allow the other. We found that participants communicated a preference for preventing intimate partner violence, child abuse, and deaths related to economic decline rather than deaths from COVID-19, which connotes that the public finds the detrimental effects of lockdowns to be more deplorable than possible additional COVID-19 deaths.
