Men and Women perceive risk related to Covid-19 in different ways, says study

By – Devanshi Srivastava

According to the findings of the research, women expressed more concern about the health hazards of Covid-19 than men. Compared to women, males showed more concern about the economic consequences of the epidemic.

The findings of a new study conducted by researchers from Virginia Tech revealed that men and women are concerned about the effect of Covid-19 in vastly different ways.

Men are more worried about the financial ramifications of Covid-19, while women are more fearful and have more negative expectations about health-related results than men. The findings of the research were published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology earlier this month.

A poll was performed online in April 2020 by the researchers, Sheryl Ball and Alec Smith, to assess the emotional responses, behaviors, and expectations of participants in relation to gender and the pandemic.

“We discovered that ladies had greater anxiety of the health hazards related to Covid-19 than men. Compared to women, males showed more concern about the economic consequences of the epidemic “Smith stated himself.

Within a few days of the outbreak, Ball and Smith were interested in how the Covid-19 epidemic might affect people’s economic choices, such as their willingness to accept a financial risk or their willingness to put their confidence into someone else’s hands. As previously stated by researchers, women are often less eager to take chances than males.

“I believe the standard individual is a smaller amount scared of Covid-19 today than they’re going to be in April 2020,” Ball remarked. “The reason we expect this is often because once we first gathered data, it had been at the start, middle, and end of April 2020, and when we saw that anxiety had reduced significantly even during that month, we came to this conclusion. In the intervening period, we anticipate that it has continued to decline.”

“The most important finding from our study is that individuals are concerned about the pandemic’s impact on their finances as well as healthcare security,” Smith said. “As we all know, preventive methods like wearing a mask are very beneficial. We believe that communications designed to persuade individuals to take these preventive actions should highlight not just the health implications and advantages, but also the economic rewards of taking these steps.”

Professors Sheryl Ball and Alec Smith work at the Department of Economics at Virginia Tech, where they specialize in behavioral economics and game theory.

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