Study warns people get false sense of safety from COVID-19 when hanging with friends

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

People wrongly believe their friends will protect them from coronavirus, according to a new study.

When people are out and about with pals they take fewer precautions against the deadly bug, say scientists.

They even feel safer by just thinking about friends and family, suggest the findings.

During the two long years of the pandemic, people have become more and more accustomed to spending time with only their closest friends and family instead of bigger groups, but this may have unintended consequences.

Friends and family give us all a sense of comfort but it is dangerous and irrational to believe loved ones will protect us from COVID-19.

People end up with a ‘’friend-shield effect’’ giving them a false sense of comfort, which means they take fewer precautions and risk giving the virus to the people closest to them.

For the study, academics in Spain undertook five online experiments with American participants.

They found people were less likely to be cautious even when they just thought of a pal while reading news about the disease.

People were also less likely to take precautions if they believed a friend had given them the virus or if they simply saw a pal turn up at an indoor restaurant.

Conservatives were more likely than liberals to take fewer precautions around friends, the researchers found.

In one experiment with 495 participants, one group of people were asked to write down memories of a close friend while the other group wrote about a distant acquaintance.

All participants then read a news article stating that unhealthy snacks can increase the risks of more severe COVID-19 infection symptoms, while the use of hand sanitizers, face masks and disinfecting wipes can reduce the likelihood of infection.

The participants then chose either a junk food item- a chocolate bar or crisps- or a health protection product- a face mask, hand sanitizer or disinfecting wipe- from an online store.

Participants who wrote about a close friend were more likely to pick junk food over a health protection product than those who wrote about a distant acquaintance.

Another experiment divided 262 participants had never caught the bug into three groups.

They were told to imagine they had been infected with coronavirus either by a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger.

Participants were then asked how much they planned to spend on health protection products over the next two months.

Those who imagined infection by a friend planned to spend less than half as much on health protection items than those who imagined infection by an acquaintance or a stranger.

The next experiment was made up of 109 people who had been previously infected with COVID-19 and knew the source of their infection.

Participants infected by friends or family members were less likely to think they would get infected again than those previously infected by acquaintances or strangers.

In the last experiment, 301 participants were split into three groups whose members were told to imagine they were going to a coffee shop either alone, with a friend or with an acquaintance.

They were then asked about how crowded they expected the coffee shop to be and about their political orientation.

Conservatives expected the coffee shop to be less crowded and thought they were less likely to catch the infection if they were going with a friend rather than an acquaintance or on their own. Liberals did not make the same association.

Study co-author Dr Eline De Vries Associate Professor of Marketing at Carlos III University in Madrid said: “Health safety campaigns should make greater efforts to inform the public regarding the friend-shield effect and aim for a more holistic response to future pandemics by taking both physical infection rates and psychological risk perceptions into account.

“Covid-19 public health campaigns should caution against individuals’ tendency to engage in less protective behaviors when the infection risk is associated with friends and family, even if only tangentially.

“Health campaigns also should consider tailoring messages for different audiences, such as conservatives or liberals.”

The findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.