Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn 2020, the growing COVID‐19 pandemic threatened engagement with the U.S. presidential election. Did this threat affect how people perceived the voting process and the means by which they voted? Four months before the election, 564 participants in several states viewed slideshows framing the pandemic primarily as a health or economic threat, then rated their impressions of voting environments and their attitudes about various voting methods. Following the general election, these data were matched to records indicating if and how participants voted. Exposure to the health consequences of COVID‐19 led people to judge socially dense polling places more negatively but had few effects on other voter outcomes. Instead, chronic aversion to germs predicted more negative responses to dense polling places as well as support for, and use of, socially distanced voting methods, even when accounting for other relevant factors such as partisanship and local COVID‐19 rates.

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has created widespread stress. Since many people cope with stress by eating, the current study investigated whether eating behaviors shifted among U.S. adults after the emergence of the pandemic. Data from national, crowdsourced surveys conducted on March 31(st), 2020 and February 13(th), 2019 were compared. Average levels of eating to cope and food addiction symptoms did not appear to shift during the early stages of the pandemic; however, U.S. adults ate about 14% more added sugars. Moreover, greater stress in response to the pandemic was associated with greater eating to cope, added sugars intake, food addiction symptoms, drinking to cope, and drinking frequency. These associations differed by the presence of state-level stay-at-home orders, perceived vulnerability to disease, age, U.S. political party affiliation, and gender. Although eating behaviors did not appear to majorly shift during the early stages of the pandemic, stress from the pandemic may intensify some maladaptive coping tendencies among U.S. adults.