Today another of my paper on probability estimates has been published. Whoo!

This one is, inevitably, about COVID. We show that, early on in the pandemic, Turkish people’s (self-reported) COVID-preventive behaviours were completely unrelated to their perceived risk of catching the virus, but were related to their overall probability estimates for positive events. In other words, people who made more optimistic estimates about the probabilities of their becoming wealthy, being successful, being liked by other people etc. were more likely to take effective action against COVID by staying home, wearing masks, and washing their hands. People who made more pessimistic estimates about their probability of catching COVID did not take action to protect themselves. Weird, right?

You can access the paper for free, until 23rd April, from here.

Booth, R.W., Peker, M., Yavuz, B.B., & Aksu, A. (2022). Estimated probabilities of positive, vs. negative, events show separable correlations with COVID-19 preventive behaviours. Personality and Individual Differences, 191, 111576. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111576