Lockdown has had an inevitable impact on our mental wellbeing, but new research from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya highlights the impact it has also had on our decision-making.

The study examined the impact of the various lockdown measures introduced across Europe on people’s cognitive capacity and found diminished capabilities, which led to them taking on more risks and generally making poorer choices.

Lockdown fatigue

The researchers quizzed around 5,000 people from the UK, Spain, and Italy, with the three countries chosen in part due to the criticism they each received for their handling of the pandemic.  As such, the researchers reasoned that citizens of these countries would have suffered more than many from Covid.

They sent out two questionnaires, the first of which was designed to measure exposure to health, mental health, occupational, and stress-related impacts during the lockdown.  The second was looking more at the cognitive function of each volunteer as well as things such as altruism, decision-making, and reciprocity.

“We wanted to explore the impact of lockdown and other COVID-19-related restrictions on people’s lives and how this affected their decision-making,” the researchers explain.

Poorer decision making

The results reveal that people who were more exposed to the various consequences of the lockdown also suffered from diminished cognitive capabilities, which in turn led to them making not only riskier decisions but also suffering from reduced civic-mindedness.

“People’s impaired decision-making abilities were impaired, and their reactions were not those we might have expected,” the researchers explain. “Instead of being more careful because they were in a pandemic, they were taking risks, because they couldn’t take it any more.”

It was also far more common for a punitive attitude towards others to exist, with people more frequently wanting those who failed to wear a mask or evaded restrictions to be punished.

Social cost

The researchers believe that decisions were made around the lockdowns without perhaps taking into account the social costs involved.  Now, they argue, we have a situation where up to 40% of people are suffering from some kind of mental health issue.

The pandemic was also found to have affected the spontaneity of people’s decision-making, with a preference for immediate rewards and on-the-spot decisions, even if these are significant ones, such as choosing to leave the city.

“These were decisions in which the cost-benefit assessment was highly conditioned by the pandemic. It seemed as if the world was coming to an end and people preferred to benefit today, immediately, without thinking about tomorrow,” the researchers explain.

The paper has obvious implications in terms of the public health of societies after, and indeed during, the pandemic, as the various lockdown measures and mitigation strategies used have had inevitable consequences for the health and behaviors of people.  These need to be taken into account both when determining the best approach and how to handle any fallout from the measures.