ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2021
Are People Optimistically Biased about the Risk of COVID-19 Infection? Lessons from the First Wave of the Pandemic in Europe.
Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Assessing dengue knowledge, attitudes and preventive practices in France and Italy: A cross-sectional study using participatory surveillance cohorts.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Optimism bias, judgment of severity, and behavioral change during two stages of the pandemics in China.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Enhancing global disaster preparedness: A scoping review of the current integration of situational awareness and disaster mindset in healthcare education.AIMS public health · 2025Review
- Effects of health-related dispositions on citizens' appraisals toward the COVID-19 pandemic and protective behavior.PloS one · 2024Article
- Unconventional data, unprecedented insights: leveraging non-traditional data during a pandemic.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on energy literacy and conservation behavior in academic buildings of Kuwait.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Attitudes towards booster, testing and isolation, and their impact on COVID-19 response in winter 2022/2023 in France, Belgium, and Italy: a cross-sectional survey and modelling study.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2023Article
- Do unbiased people act more rationally?-The case of comparative realism and vaccine intention.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Are College Students Interested in Family Health History Education? A Large Needs Assessment Survey Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Prevalence and Factors of Postpartum Depression During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2023Article
- Emerging data inputs for infectious diseases surveillance and decision making.Frontiers in digital health · 2023Review
- Self-uniqueness beliefs and adherence to recommended precautions. A 5-wave longitudinal COVID-19 study.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- Self-Assessed Personality Traits and Adherence to the COVID-19 Lockdown.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Unrealistic pessimism and obsessive-compulsive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic: Two longitudinal studies.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2022Article
- Emotional profiling and cognitive networks unravel how mainstream and alternative press framed AstraZeneca, Pfizer and COVID-19 vaccination campaigns.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Relationship between Preventive Health Behavior, Optimistic Bias, Hypochondria, and Mass Psychology in Relation to the Coronavirus Pandemic among Young Adults in Korea.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Temporal aspects of unrealistic optimism and robustness of this bias: A longitudinal study in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.PloS one · 2022Article
- It Matters to Whom You Compare Yourself: The Case of Unrealistic Optimism and Gender-Specific Comparisons.American journal of men's healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Unrealistic optimism, the underestimation of one's risk of experiencing harm, has been investigated extensively to understand better and predict behavioural responses to health threats. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a relative dearth of research existed in this domain regarding epidemics, which is surprising considering that this optimistic bias has been associated with a lack of engagement in protective behaviours critical in fighting twenty-first-century, emergent, infectious diseases. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by investigating whether people demonstrated optimism bias during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, how this changed over time, and whether unrealistic optimism was negatively associated with protective measures. Taking advantage of a pre-existing international participative influenza surveillance network (
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.