TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hein, Grit
A1  - Gamer, Matthias
A1  - Gall, Dominik
A1  - Gründahl, Marthe
A1  - Domschke, Katharina
A1  - Andreatta, Marta
A1  - Wieser, Matthias J.
A1  - Pauli, Paul
T1  - Social cognitive factors outweigh negative emotionality in predicting COVID-19 related safety behaviors
JF  - Preventive Medicine Reports
N2  - Emotion-motivation models propose that behaviors, including health behaviors, should be predicted by the same variables that also predict negative affect since emotional reactions should induce a motivation to avoid threatening situations. In contrast, social cognitive models propose that safety behaviors are predicted by a different set of variables that mainly reflect cognitive and socio-structural aspects. Here, we directly tested these opposing hypotheses in young adults (N = 4134) in the context of COVID-19-related safety behaviors to prevent infections. In each participant, we collected measures of negative affect as well as cognitive and socio-structural variables during the lockdown in the first infection wave in Germany. We found a negative effect of the pandemic on emotional responses. However, this was not the main predictor for young adults’ willingness to comply with COVID-19-related safety measures. Instead, individual differences in compliance were mainly predicted by cognitive and socio-structural variables. These results were confirmed in an independent data set. This study shows that individuals scoring high on negative affect during the pandemic are not necessarily more likely to comply with safety regulations. Instead, political measures should focus on cognitive interventions and the societal relevance of the health issue. These findings provide important insights into the basis of health-related concerns and feelings as well as behavioral adaptations.
KW  - social cognitive
KW  - negative affect
KW  - safety behavior
KW  - survey
KW  - COVID-19
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-265008
VL  - 24
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Stegmann, Yannik
A1  - Andreatta, Marta
A1  - Pauli, Paul
A1  - Wieser, Matthias J.
T1  - Associative learning shapes visual discrimination in a web-based classical conditioning task
JF  - Scientific Reports
N2  - Threat detection plays a vital role in adapting behavior to changing environments. A fundamental function to improve threat detection is learning to differentiate between stimuli predicting danger and safety. Accordingly, aversive learning should lead to enhanced sensory discrimination of danger and safety cues. However, studies investigating the psychophysics of visual and auditory perception after aversive learning show divergent findings, and both enhanced and impaired discrimination after aversive learning have been reported. Therefore, the aim of this web-based study is to examine the impact of aversive learning on a continuous measure of visual discrimination. To this end, 205 participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm before and after completing a visual discrimination task using differently oriented grating stimuli. Participants saw either unpleasant or neutral pictures as unconditioned stimuli (US). Results demonstrated sharpened visual discrimination for the US-associated stimulus (CS+), but not for the unpaired conditioned stimuli (CS-). Importantly, this finding was irrespective of the US's valence. These findings suggest that associative learning results in increased stimulus salience, which facilitates perceptual discrimination in order to prioritize attentional deployment.
KW  - classical conditioning
KW  - fear conditioning
KW  - psychology
KW  - sensory processing
KW  - visual system
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260480
VL  - 11
IS  - 1
ER  -