In the first week of the coronavirus pandemic, people living in the United States underestimated their chances of catching the virus, or of getting seriously ill from the virus, according to a recently published Caltech-led study. But as the days progressed, those same people became more worried about their personal risk, and, as a result, began to increase protective behaviors such as washing hands and social distancing.
The study, a collaboration between Toby Wise, a visiting postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and Dean Mobbs, assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience at Caltech and a Chen Scholar, appears in the journal Royal Society Open Science.