Do you dislike social distancing? You might have a bad memory, study says
Scientists say your compliance — or not — with social distancing orders during the coronavirus pandemic has a lot to do with how well your short-term, or working memory, can retain information.
In other words, those who abide by infection prevention rules may be more intelligent, according to California researchers.
The study, published July 10 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers advice about how to get people to comply with social distancing orders based on their mental capacity to do so.
“Individual differences in working memory capacity can predict social distancing compliance just as well as some social factors such as personality traits,” study co-author Weiwei Zhang, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, said in a news release. “This suggests policy makers will need to consider individuals’ general cognitive abilities when promoting compliance behaviors such as wearing a mask or engaging in physical distancing.”
Working memory is the temporary holding of information “no longer present in the environment” in the mind for just a couple of seconds, according to ScienceDirect.
And the amount of information someone can hold shines a light on that person’s intelligence, comprehension and learning, the researchers said.
The team recruited 850 U.S. residents to answer a demographic survey and a set of questions about their thoughts on social distancing, their depressed or anxious moods and personality, the release said. Participants also had to complete cognitive tests to measure their intelligence.
The questionnaires and surveys were completed between March 13 and March 25 — the two weeks after President Donald Trump declared COVID-19 a national emergency.
The researchers learned that people with “higher” working memory capacity “have an increased awareness” of the benefits of social distancing over its costs, such as isolation, according to the release.
As a result, these individuals were more likely to keep their distance from those outside their quarantine bubble early on in the pandemic.
Even when the team removed personality traits, education and income from the mix, the same ideology held true: Working memory capacity predicts social distancing compliance, Zhang said.
Why is it so hard for some to social distance?
The reason it may be so hard for some to abide by pandemic guidance is because the suggested behaviors don’t come natural, the researchers said, and forcing them to become the new norm requires “an effortful decision process that relies on working memory.”
“The bottom line is we should not rely on habitual behaviors since social distancing is not yet adequately established in U.S. society,” Zhang said. “Before social distancing becomes a habit and a well-adopted social norm, the decision to follow social distancing and wearing masks would be mentally effortful. Consequently, we will have to deliberately make the effort to overcome our tendency to avoid effortful decisions, such as to not practice social distancing.”
One thing is clear when it comes to convincing people to do something they may not want to do: “Be succinct, concise and brief,’ Zhang said.
“Make the decision process easy for people.”
This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 4:31 PM with the headline "Do you dislike social distancing? You might have a bad memory, study says."
