The cognitive science of COVID-19: Acceptance, denial, and belief change

Abstract

Because the spread of pandemics depends heavily on human choices and behaviors, dealing with COVID-19 requires insights from cognitive science which integrates psychology, neuroscience, computer modeling, philosophy, anthropology, and linguistics. Cognitive models can explain why scientists adopt hypotheses about the causes and treatments of disease based on explanatory coherence. Irrational deviations from good reasoning are explained by motivated inference in which conclusions are influenced by personal goals that contribute to emotional coherence. Decisions about COVID-19 can also be distorted by well-known psychological and neural mechanisms. Cognitive science provides advice about how to improve human behavior in pandemics by changing beliefs and by improving behaviors that result from intention-action gaps.

Keywords: COVID-19; Causes; Cognitive science; Decisions; Explanatory coherence; Intention-action gaps; Motivated inference; Psychology.