“Facing pandemics: Social and psychological determinants of behavior under global health crisis“
by M. Kossowska, N. Letki, T. Zaleskiewicz, & S. Wichary.
The current pandemic has mobilized strong, interdisciplinary stream of the so-called ‘COVID research’. The emphasis, though, is placed on life sciences due to their expected capacity to provide medical solutions to the pandemic. However, social sciences can also provide a range of highly relevant insights into how to tackle the determinants and consequences of a global health crisis. The aim of this book is to bring together in an interdisciplinary fashion a wide spectrum of theoretical concepts and their empirical applications in relation to the COVID-19 pandemics. It aims to inform our understanding of the social and psychological bases of the pandemic situation, but also to inspire successful strategies to combat its adverse social, cognitive, and emotional consequences. The volume provides an up-to-date discussion of the classic and contemporary research on such phenomena as fear, risk, judgment, and decision-making, taking expert advice, threat and uncertainty, group identity and cohesion, social and institutional trust, and communication in the context of a global health crisis. Its aim is to provide reference for academic research, but also to inform short-term and long-term policy solutions. Written by a group of psychologists and sociologists, it delivers a wider and more multifaceted approach to the topic that has hitherto been done.
The book has been published in 2020 in Polish, but its English edition will be published worldwide in Summer/Autumn 2021