How does COVID affect the brain? Two neuroscientists explain

T. Kilpatrick & S. Petrou

The Conversation

Originally posted 11 Aug 21

Here is an excerpt:

In a UK-based study released as a pre-print online in June, researchers compared brain images taken of people before and after exposure to COVID. They showed parts of the limbic system had decreased in size compared to people not infected. This could signal a future vulnerability to brain diseases and may play a role in the emergence of long-COVID symptoms.

COVID could also indirectly affect the brain. The virus can damage blood vessels and cause either bleeding or blockages resulting in the disruption of blood, oxygen, or nutrient supply to the brain, particularly to areas responsible for problem solving.

The virus also activates the immune system, and in some people, this triggers the production of toxic molecules which can reduce brain function.

Although research on this is still emerging, the effects of COVID on nerves that control gut function should also be considered. This may impact digestion and the health and composition of gut bacteria, which are known to influence the function of the brain.

The virus could also compromise the function of the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland, often known as the “master gland”, regulates hormone production. This includes cortisol, which governs our response to stress. When cortisol is deficient, this may contribute to long-term fatigue.

The article is here.

Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis

Everett, J.A.C., Colombatto, C., Awad, E. et al. 

Nat Hum Behav (2021). 

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01156-y

Abstract

Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others (‘instrumental harm’) reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equally (‘impartial beneficence’) may increase trust. In a multi-site experiment spanning 22 countries on six continents, participants (N = 23,929) completed self-report (N = 17,591) and behavioural (N = 12,638) measures of trust in leaders who endorsed utilitarian or non-utilitarian principles in dilemmas concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Across both the self-report and behavioural measures, endorsement of instrumental harm decreased trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence increased trust. These results show how support for different ethical principles can impact trust in leaders, and inform effective public communication during times of global crisis.

Discussion

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a number of moral dilemmas that engender conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles. Building on past work on utilitarianism and trust, we tested the hypothesis that endorsement of utilitarian solutions to pandemic dilemmas would impact trust in leaders. Specifically, in line with suggestions from previous work and case studies of public communications during the early stages of the pandemic, we predicted that endorsing instrumental harm would decrease trust in leaders, while endorsing impartial beneficence would increase trust.

Partisan Schadenfreude and the Demand for Candidate Cruelty

Webster, S.W., Glynn, A.N., & Motta, M. P.

Unpublished Manuscript

July 2021

Abstract

We establish the prevalence of partisan schadenfreude—that is, taking “joy in the suffering” of partisan others. Analyzing attitudes on health care, taxation, climate change, and the coronavirus pandemic, we find that a sizable portion of the American mass public engages in partisan schadenfreude and that these attitudes are most commonly expressed by the most ideologically extreme Americans. Additionally, we provide evidence of the demand for candidate cruelty, finding a sizable portion of the American public to be more likely than not to vote for candidates who promise to pass policies that “disproportionately harm” supporters of the opposing political party. Finally, we demonstrate that partisan schadenfreude is highly predictive of this likelihood to vote for cruel candidates and much more predictive of this likelihood than strong partisanship or ideological extremity. In sum, our results suggest that partisan schadenfreude is widespread and has disturbing implications for American political behavior.

Discussion

American politics is increasingly divisive. While such a claim is relatively undisputed, few have attempted to study how those divisions psychologically motivate extreme and punitive forms of political participation. In this study we have taken an important first step in this regard. Utilizing a series of novel datasets measuring the political attitudes of thousands of Americans, we have shown that a significant portion of the mass public is prone to engaging in what we have called partisan schadenfreude, or taking “joy in the suffering” of partisan others.

We have also demonstrated that Americans express a preference for candidate cruelty. Specifically, our results suggest that a significant portion—over one-third—of the mass public is willing to vote for a candidate of unknown ideological leanings who promises to pass policies that “disproportionately harm” supporters of the opposing political party. Together, these findings help resolve uncertainty about whether the public passively accepts politicians who espouse punitive policies and rhetoric, or actively demands them. We find that Americans actively demand candidate cruelty, and that this demand is highest among those who exhibit the greatest amount of partisan schadenfreude.

The research is here.

The sympathetic plot, its psychological origins, and implications for the evolution of fiction

Singh, M. (2021). 

Emotion Review, 13(3), 183–198.

https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739211022824

Abstract

For over a century, scholars have compared stories and proposed universal narrative patterns. Despite their diversity, nearly all of these projects converged on a common structure: the sympathetic plot. The sympathetic plot describes how a goal-directed protagonist confronts obstacles, overcomes them, and wins rewards. Stories with these features frequently exhibit other common elements, including an adventure and an orphaned main character. Here, I identify and aim to explain the sympathetic plot. I argue that the sympathetic plot is a technology for entertainment that works by engaging two sets of psychological mechanisms. First, it triggers mechanisms for learning about obstacles and how to overcome them. It builds interest by confronting a protagonist with a problem and induces satisfaction when the problem is solved. Second, it evokes sympathetic joy. It establishes the protagonist as an ideal cooperative partner pursuing a justifiable goal, convincing audiences that they should assist the character. When the protagonist succeeds, they receive rewards, and audiences feel sympathetic joy, an emotion normally triggered when cooperative partners triumph. The psychological capacities underlying the sympathetic plot are not story-specific adaptations. Instead, they evolved for purposes like learning and cooperation before being co-opted for entertainment by storytellers and cultural evolution.

Summary

Why do people everywhere tell stories about abused stepdaughters who marry royalty and revel in awarded riches? Whence all the virtuous orphans? The answer, I have argued, is entertainment.Tales in which a likable main character overcomes difficulty and reaps rewards create a compelling cognitive dreamscape. They twiddle psychological mechanisms involved in learning and cooperation, narrowing attention and inducing sympathetic joy. Story imitates life, or at least the elements of life to which we’ve evolved pleasurable responses.

A pdf is here.

Note: Many times, our patients narrate stories of their lives.  Narrative patterns may help psychologists understand internal motivations of our patients, how they view their life trajectories, and how we can help them alter their storylines for improved mental health.

The irrationality of transhumanists

Susan B. Levin

iai.tv Issue 9

Originally posted 11 Jan 21

Bioenhancement is among the hottest topics in bioethics today. The most contentious area of debate here is advocacy of “radical” enhancement (aka transhumanism). Because transhumanists urge us to categorically heighten select capacities, above all, rationality, it would be incorrect to say that the possessors of these abilities were human beings: to signal, unmistakably, the transcendent status of these beings, transhumanists call them “posthuman,” “godlike,” and “divine.” For many, the idea of humanity’s technological self-transcendence has a strong initial appeal; that appeal, intensified by transhumanists’ relentless confidence that radical bioenhancement will occur if only we commit adequate resources to the endeavor, yields a viscerally potent combination. On this of all topics, however, we should not let ourselves be ruled by viscera. 

Transhumanists present themselves as the sole rational parties to the debate over radical bioenhancement: merely questioning a dedication to skyrocketing rational capacity or lifespan testifies to one’s irrationality. Scientifically, for this charge of irrationality not to be intellectually perverse, the evidence on transhumanists’ side would have to be overwhelming.

(cut)

Transhumanists are committed to extreme rational essentialism: they treasure the limitless augmentation of rational capacity, treating affect as irrelevant or targeting it (at minimum, the so-called negative variety) for elimination. Further disrupting transhumanists’ fixation with radical cognitive bioenhancement, therefore, is the finding that pharmacological boosts, such as they are, may not be entirely or even mainly cognitive. Motivation may be strengthened, with resulting boosts to subjects’ informational facility. What’s more, being in a “positive” (i.e., happy) mood can impair cognitive performance, while being in a “negative” (i.e., sad) one can strengthen it by, for instance, making subjects more disposed to reject stereotypes. 

The full article is here.

Health Care in the U.S. Compared to Other High-Income Countries: Worst Outcomes

The Commonwealth Fund

Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly

Originally posted 4 Aug 21

Introduction

No two nations are alike when it comes to health care. Over time, each country has settled on a unique mix of policies, service delivery systems, and financing models that work within its resource constraints. Even among high-income nations that have the option to spend more on health care, approaches often vary substantially. These choices affect health system performance in terms of access to care, patients’ experiences with health care, and people’s health outcomes. In this report, we compare the health systems of 11 high-income countries as a means to generate insights about the policies and practices that are associated with superior performance.

With the COVID-19 pandemic imposing an unprecedented stress test on the health care and public health systems of all nations, such a comparison is especially germane. Success in controlling and preventing infection and disease has varied greatly. The same is true of countries’ ability to address the challenges that the pandemic has presented to the workforce, operations, and financial stability of the organizations delivering care. And while the comparisons we draw are based on data collected prior to the pandemic or during the earliest months of the crisis, the prepandemic strengths and weaknesses of each country’s preexisting arrangements for health care and public health have undoubtedly been shaping its experience throughout the crisis.

For our assessment of health care system performance in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we used indicators available across five domains:

• Access to care
• Care process
• Administrative efficiency
• Equity
• Health care outcomes

For more information on these performance domains and their component measures, see How We Measured Performance. Most of the data were drawn from surveys examining how members of the public and primary care physicians experience health care in their respective countries. These Commonwealth Fund surveys were conducted by SSRS in collaboration with partner organizations in the 10 other countries. Additional data were drawn from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The info is here.

Spreading False Vax Info Might Cost You Your Medical License

Ryan Basen

Medpagetoday.com

Originally posted 3 Aug 21

Physicians who intentionally spread misinformation or disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines could be disciplined by state medical boards and may have their licenses suspended or taken away, said the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB).

Due "to a dramatic increase in the dissemination of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and disinformation by physicians and other health care professionals on social media platforms, online and in the media," the FSMB, a national nonprofit representing medical boards that license and discipline allopathic and osteopathic physicians, issued the following statement:

Physicians who willfully generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license. Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not. They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus driven for the betterment of public health. Spreading inaccurate COVID-19 vaccine information contradicts that responsibility, threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk.

The FSMB is aiming to remind physicians that words matter, that they have a platform, and that misinformation and disinformation -- especially within the context of the pandemic -- can cause harm, said president and CEO Humayun Chaudhry, DO. "I hope that physicians and other licensees get the message," he added.

The info is here.

Character-Infused Ethical Decision Making

Nguyen, B., Crossan, M. 

J Bus Ethics (2021). 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04790-8

Abstract

Despite a growing body of research by management scholars to understand and explain failures in ethical decision making (EDM), misconduct prevails. Scholars have identified character, founded in virtue ethics, as an important perspective that can help to address the gap in organizational misconduct. While character has been offered as a valid perspective in EDM, current theorizing on how it applies to EDM has not been well developed. We thus integrate character, founded in virtue ethics, into Rest’s (1986) EDM model to reveal how shifting attention to the nature of the moral agent provides critical insights into decision making more broadly and EDM specifically. Virtue ethics provides a perspective on EDM that acknowledges and anticipates uncertainties, considers its contextual constraints, and contemplates the development of the moral agent. We thus answer the call by many scholars to integrate character in EDM in order to advance the understanding of the field and suggest propositions for how to move forward. We conclude with implications of a character-infused approach to EDM for future research.

From the Conclusion

As described at the outset, misconduct occurs in every facet of organizational life from the individual to the collective, at a localized and global scale, and covers inappropriate action in the private (2008 financial crisis), public/government (Panama Papers), academic institutions (Varsity Blues Scandal), and even touches not-for-profit organizations (IOC doping scandal). Character highlights the fact that misconduct often arises from “too much of a good thing” (Antonakis et al., 2017); when one or a set of character dimensions are privileged over the others, leading to deficiencies in those undervalued dimensions. For example, those who contributed to the financial crisis and the Panama Paper scandal were likely high on drive but deficient in justice and humanity. Thus, future research could insert character into the equation to better understand the nature of misconduct.

The paper is here.

White and minority demographic shifts, intergroup threat, and right-wing extremism

Bai, H., & Federico, C. M.

(2021). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 94, May 2021, 104114

Abstract

We present four studies (one correlational and three experimental) of American Whites that examine relationships between White and minority demographic shifts, intergroup threat, and support for extreme-right groups and actions. We focus in particular on the role of collective existential threat (i.e., a perception that the ingroup will cease to exist), along with three alternative/competing intergroup threats: status threat, symbolic threat, and prototypicality threat. Though no zero-order relationship was found between perceived White population decline and far-right variables, we find evidence that (1) perceived White population decline leads to collective existential threat net of other perceived demographic shifts, (2) collective existential threat is related to far-right support net of other threats, and (3) perceived White decline has a robust indirect relationship with measures of far-right support via collective existential threat.

Highlights

• Perceived White population decline leads to collective existential threat net of other perceived demographic shifts.

• Existential threat is related to far-right support net of other threats.

• Perceived White population decline has a robust indirect relationship with measures of far-right support via collective existential threat.

A pdf is here.