{"id":85873,"date":"2021-10-05T13:26:33","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T17:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/?p=85873"},"modified":"2021-10-06T10:14:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-06T14:14:44","slug":"researchers-study-effect-of-covid-19-lockdowns-on-peoples-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/canada\/researchers-study-effect-of-covid-19-lockdowns-on-peoples-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers study effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on people’s thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The COVID-19 lockdowns drastically altered people’s behaviour, and that led to a change in their thought patterns, according to a new study co-authored by researchers at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. (John Last\/CBC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There’s no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic has been weighing heavily on many people’s minds, but now researchers at Queen’s University have a better idea of exactly how it’s been doing that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Researchers at the Kingston, Ont., university sent text messages to two groups of people under\u00a0lockdown in the\u00a0United Kingdom \u2014 young adults\u00a0roughly between the ages of 20 to 35, and older folks\u00a055 and up \u2014 and\u00a0asked\u00a0them\u00a0what they were thinking about.<\/p>\n

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They\u00a0then looked at the nature of the responses and compared them\u00a0to a similar dataset gathered before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

It turned out the lockdown\u00a0significantly altered the frequency and nature of certain thoughts, particularly when it came to how often people were thinking about others, said Jonathan Smallwood, a\u00a0psychology professor at Queen’s and the co-lead on the study.<\/p>\n

“Broadly speaking, [thought] patterns of social cognition \u2014 and also goal-directed, future thinking \u2014 seemed to be repressed during COVID,” Smallwood told CBC Radio’s\u00a0All In A Day<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“One of the main reasons that happened was the changes in people’s routines.”<\/p>\n

‘Strong bias’ toward thinking of others<\/h2>\n

When the participants\u00a0were alone \u2014 a common happenstance during COVID-19 \u2014 they turned their minds to others\u00a0less than they would have in similar circumstances\u00a0pre-pandemic, the researchers found.<\/p>\n

But after the rare occasions they were able to socialize, either online or in person, their texts revealed\u00a0they’d be thinking about other human beings more frequently than the pre-pandemic data.<\/p>\n

The fact participants so readily shifted their thought patterns after seeing someone\u00a0suggests people have\u00a0“a really strong bias” toward thinking about others, Smallwood said.<\/p>\n

Understanding the connection between a person’s actions and their resulting thoughts, he added, will help “build quite a multi-dimensional picture of a person.”<\/p>\n

That could be of benefit when it comes to better understanding and treating mental health conditions,\u00a0Smallwood said, as there’s evidence that certain disorders like social anxiety or agoraphobia are connected to changes in people’s activities.<\/p>\n

“This will help build a very inclusive model of [the]\u00a0different ways that a person’s behaviour and their thinking can contribute to their well-being,” said Smallwood.<\/p>\n

“We’re quite excited about that, moving forward, as a way for understanding mental health in a much more idiosyncratic manner than is sometimes possible.”<\/p>\n

The study is the “first to actually document the systematic changes that have occurred in thinking patterns during this unprecedented time,” said study co-author Giulia Poerio, a lecturer with the psychology department at the University of Essex, in a statement.<\/p>\n

The study’s findings have been published in the journal\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

CBC<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic has been weighing heavily on many people’s minds, but now researchers at Queen’s University have a better idea of exactly how it’s been doing that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":85874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3539],"tags":[18736,21095],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Researchers-study-effect-of-COVID-19-lockdowns-on-peoples-thoughts-Milenio-Stadium-Canada.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mileniostadium.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}