“Extraverts and Conservatives are More Likely to Get COVID” By Glenn Geher [Darwin’s Subterranean World]

“Extraverts and Conservatives are More Likely to Get COVID

The pandemic is largely the result of our evolved social psychology.

Glenn Geher
Darwin’s Subterranean World

Posted May 15, 2021

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/202105/extraverts-and-conservatives-are-more-likely-get-covid
 
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Personality Correlates of COVID-19 Infection Proclivity: Extraversion Kills

Vania Rolona, Glenn Geherb, Jennifer Linkb, Alexander Mackielb

Personality and Individual Differences

Available online 14 May 2021

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110994

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“In light of the human behavioral element of COVID, my research team (a subset of The New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab ) conducted a study to help us better understand the behavioral factors that underlie the spread of this virus—a virus that has turned all of our worlds upside down in so many ways.

Our study, recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences , explored various dispositional traits that might ultimately underlie whether people are prone toward getting the virus. The two main variables we focused on were extraversion and political conservatism.

(…)

An additional evolutionary perspective as to why and how extraversion might relate to COVID infection proclivity pertains the behavioral-system hijacking hypothesis (see Reiber et al., 2010). This idea, which is admittedly beyond the scope of our data, suggests that the coronavirus, which has known effects on the nervous system, may actually hijack behavior and temporarily make people relatively sociable so as to increase its spread across an increased number of human hosts.

(…)

Gollwitzer et al. (2020) found that people who live in relatively conservative areas (based on voting patterns) have been less likely to follow social-distancing guidelines relative to those living in areas where people are more likely to vote for liberal political candidates.

In light of this basic reasoning, we predicted that people who self-identify as conservative would be more likely to wind up becoming infected with the virus relative to those who self-identify as liberal.”

“An Evolutionary Perspective on the Real Problem with Increased Screen Time” by Glenn Geher [The Evolution Institute]

“An Evolutionary Perspective on the Real Problem with Increased Screen Time

By Glenn Geher

Glenn Geher is Professor of Psychology as well as Founding Director of Evolutionary Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

https://evolution-institute.org/an-evolutionary-perspective-on-the-real-problem-with-increased-screen-time/

(…)

For years, social psychologists such as Zimbardo (2007) and Diener (1976) have documented the fact that people are not exactly at their best when they are in a state of deindividuation. People are less likely to be kind, more likely to be aggressive, and more likely to engage in a broad array of anti-social actions under deindividuated conditions. For this reason, evolutionary psychologist A. J. Figueredo (2006) referred to large cities, in which people are often engaging with strangers under deindividuated conditions, as breeding grounds for psychopathic behavior.

Want people to be on their worst behavior? Then put them in a deindividuated state and have all of their communications with others be fully anonymous.

Bottom Line

From the perspective of evolutionary mismatch, modern forms of social communication are more than a little problematic. Under ancestral conditions, nearly all communication was of the face-to-face variety. And it almost always included communication among individuals who have long-term bonds with one another. These days, a huge proportion of communication is of the hidden-behind-a-screen variety. And it often takes place between people who will only communicate with each other once in a lifetime. Any student of evolutionary social psychology will tell you that this is a recipe for trouble.”