The mental burden of stay-at-home order extensions during COVID-19.

This study evaluates the psychological impact of stay-at-home extension orders during COVID-19 and its relationship with individuals' expectations on the duration of the extensions. An online survey was administered to 1259 US adult residents to measure symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and stress induced by different stay-at-home order extensions using hypothetical length scenarios. We find that individuals exposed to two 2-week order extensions exhibit higher levels of stress and anxiety compared to those exposed to a single 4-week extension. We also find that subjects with longer expected extensions exhibit more signs of psychological damage than those with shorter expected extensions. Furthermore, we find that the negative psychological consequences of providing two shorter extensions is observed only among subjects with extension expectations of four weeks or less. Our results demonstrate that people's expectations affect the level of psychological damage caused by lockdown mandates. Our findings suggest that whenever lockdown extensions are necessary, reduced psychological distress may be possible by implementing a one-time restriction, rather than extending multiple smaller extensions perhaps due to manipulation of personal expectations.

Behavioral Ethics and the Incidence of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks.

Cognitive biases play an important role in creating and perpetuating problems that lead to foodborne illness outbreaks. By using insights from behavioral ethics, we argue that sometimes people engage in unethical behavior that increases the likelihood of foodborne illness outbreaks without necessarily intending to or being consciously aware of it. We demonstrate these insights in an analysis of the 2011 Listeriosis outbreak in the U.S. from the consumption of contaminated cantaloupes. We then provide policy implications that can improve our understanding of other kinds of disease outbreaks and epidemics.

Can episodic future thinking affect food choices?

Episodic future thinking, defined as the ability to project oneself into the future, has proven useful to pre-experience the future consequences of present actions. We investigate how episodic future thinking influences the food choices of normal weight, overweight, and obese individuals. In doing so, we conduct a controlled laboratory experiment in which participants are presented with representations of weight-increased and weight-reduced modified images of themselves before performing a food choice task. This allows subjects to vividly imagine the future consequences of their actions. We also test the effect of providing health-related information on food choices to compare with the episodic future thinking effect. Our results suggest that while providing health-related information increases the number of lite snack choices of overweight and obese individuals, engaging in episodic future thinking has a positive impact on the food choices of the obese only. These findings are supported by eye-tracking data showing how visual attention and emotional arousal (measured by pupil size) impact individuals' food choices.

The effect of food anticipation on cognitive function: An eye tracking study.

By randomizing the order in which participants perform a cognitive test and a food choice task in a controlled experiment, we investigate whether cognitive capacity can be enhanced by the simple act of anticipating food intake. Our findings show that overweight and obese participants exhibit an anticipatory food reward effect, which helped enhance their mental resources and improve their performance in a cognitive test. However, we find no anticipation effect among normal weight participants. Furthermore, eye tracking data reveal that food temptation, in the form of visual attention and emotional arousal is higher for overweight and obese individuals when they are cognitively impaired.