Imagining yourself hosting a dinner party might help you better understand COVID-19 risk

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-08-06 01:00

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Imagining COVID-19 spreading at a dinner party you hosted might help you get a better handle on the risk of COVID transmission, according to US research. The study asked people to imagine a scenario where they hosted a dinner party attended by four people at which a guest became seriously ill with COVID-19, exposed the other guests to the disease and also infected you as the host. A second group imagined a fictional character experiencing the same scenario. The researchers found that we found that older adults reported increased perceived risk of COVID-19 transmission after imagining the more personalised scenario.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Aging

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Duke University, USA

Funder: The study was funded by discretionary funding from the Duke Trinity College of Arts and Sciences to G.R.S.-L. and a US National Institute on Aging grant (no. R01-AG058574) awarded to G.R.S.-L. and R.C. A.H.S. is supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation and a Postgraduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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