Lives versus Livelihoods? Perceived economic risk has a stronger association with support for COVID-19 preventive measures than perceived health risk

This paper examines whether compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures is motivated by wanting to save lives or save the economy (or both), and which implications this carries to fight the pandemic. National representative samples were collected from 24 countries (N = 25,435). The main predictors were (1) perceived risk to contract coronavirus, (2) perceived risk to suffer economic losses due to coronavirus, and (3) their interaction effect. Individual and country-level variables were added as covariates in multilevel regression models. We examined compliance with various preventive health behaviors and support for strict containment policies. Results show that perceived economic risk consistently predicted mitigation behavior and policy support—and its effects were positive. Perceived health risk had mixed effects. Only two significant interactions between health and economic risk were identified—both positive

Identifying important individual‐ and country‐level predictors of conspiracy theorizing: a machine learning analysis

Psychological research on the predictors of conspiracy theorizing—explaining important social and political events or circumstances as secret plots by malevolent groups—has flourished in recent years. However, research has typically examined only a small number of predictors in one, or a small number of, national contexts. Such approaches make it difficult to examine the relative importance of predictors, and risk overlooking some potentially relevant variables altogether. To overcome this limitation, the present study used machine learning to rank-order the importance of 115 individual- and country-level variables in predicting conspiracy theorizing. Data were collected from 56,072 respondents across 28 countries during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Echoing previous findings, important predictors at the individual level included societal discontent, paranoia, and personal struggle. Contrary to prior research, important country-level predictors included indicators of political stability and effective government COVID response, which suggests that conspiracy theorizing may thrive in relatively well-functioning democracies

Genetics of graft-versus-host disease, I. A locus on Chromosome 1 influences development of acute graft-versus-host disease in a major histocompatibility complex mismatched murine model

Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is the major complication occurring after bone marrow transplantation. The severity of GVHD varies widely, with this variation generally being attributed to variation in the degree of disparity between host and donor for minor histocompatibility antigens. However, it is also possible that other forms of polymorphism, such as polymorphisms in immune effector molecules, might play a significant role in determining GVHD severity. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we are studying the genetic factors that influence GVHD development in a murine model. We here report the first results of this analysis, which demonstrate that a locus on Chromosome 1 of the mouse, and possibly also a locus on Chromosome 4, exert considerable influence over the development of one aspect of acute GVHD – splenomegaly – in a parent→F1 murine model. These results demonstrate that non-MHC genes can exert quite significant effects on the development of GVHD-associated pathology and that gene mapping can be used as a tool to identify these loci. Further analysis of such loci will allow identification of the mechanism whereby they influence GVHD and may lead in the future to improved selection of donors for human bone marrow transplantation