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The Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Decision-Making Processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2021

Carlos Romero-Rivas Open the ORCID record for Carlos Romero-Rivas [Opens in a new window]  and
Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado Open the ORCID record for Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado [Opens in a new window]
Carlos Romero-Rivas*
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)
Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Carlos Romero-Rivas. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. 28049Madrid (Spain). E-mail: carlos.romeror@uam.es
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Abstract

A sample of 641 participants were presented with four decision-making tasks during the first stages of the COVID–19 lockdown in Spain: The dictator game, framing problems, utilitarian/deontological and altruistic/egoistic moral dilemmas. Participants also completed questionnaires on mental health status and experiences related to the COVID–19 pandemic. We used boosted regression trees (an advanced form of regression analysis based on machine learning) to model relationships between responses to the questionnaires and decision-making tasks. Results showed that the psychological impact of the COVID–19 pandemic predicted participants’ responses to the framing problems and utilitarian/deontological and altruistic/egoistic moral dilemmas (but not to the dictator game). More concretely, the more psychological impact participants suffered, the more they were willing to choose the safest response in the framing problems, and the more deontological/altruistic were their responses to moral dilemmas. These results suggest that the psychological impact of the COVID–19 pandemic might prompt automatic processes.

Keywords

COVID–19decision-makingdictator gameframing problemsmoral dilemmas
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 24 , 2021 , e16
Copyright
© Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2021

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Footnotes

We would like to thank Professor Jane Elith and Dr. Manuel Herrera-Usagre for their guidance in data analysis. A preprint of this research was published in PsyArXiv (Romero-Rivas, C., & Rodríguez-Cuadrado, S. (2020, April 28). Moral decision-making and mental health during the COVID–19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8whkg

Conflicts of Interest: None.

Funding Statement: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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