The impact of pandemic-related worry on cognitive functioning and risk-taking.

ABSTRACT: Here, we sought to quantify the effects of experienced fear and worry, engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic, on both cognitive abilities-speed of information processing, task-set shifting, and proactive control-as well as economic risk-taking. Leveraging a repeated-measures cross-sectional design, we examined the performance of 1517 participants, collected during the early phase of the pandemic in the US (April-June 2020), finding that self-reported pandemic-related worry predicted deficits in information processing speed and maintenance of goal-related contextual information. In a classic economic risk-taking task, we observed that worried individuals' choices were more sensitive to the described outcome probabilities of risky actions. Overall, these results elucidate the cognitive consequ

SUBMITTER: da Silva Castanheira K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8601558 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature