Covid-19 has not only seen physical changes amongst humans (social distancing, isolation and a lot more hand washing) but changes in behaviours and attitudes. Whilst some people are taking ultra strict precautions to their daily lives, others aren’t so much. Could this be explained psychologically through the theory of our ‘locus of control’?
Locus of control refers to the extent to which people feel that they have control over the events that influence their lives.
Someone who has an internal ‘locus of control’ believes their successes come from their OWN efforts. In this instance, someone takes responsibility for their OWN health by taking individual measures to prevent themselves catching the virus. These are the people who are sanitizing their hands often and social distancing strictly when around others. These people are making sure they listen to governmental advice and are taking this situation into their OWN hands by staying at home and protecting themselves. A person who expects to succeed at not catching this virus (or passing it on) are more motivated and more likely to want to learn.
Someone who has an external ‘locus of control’, believes their successes come from LUCK or FATE. In this instance, they believe that fate or circumstance would determine whether or not they would catch the virus or pass it on. These people are more likely to place responsibility for their own health onto others, rather than taking their own measures to successfully stop the virus potentially spreading. You might hold an external locus of control without really thinking about it. Only yesterday, my mum was at the local M&S stocking up on vegetables and the woman over the counter was touching the items with no gloves on. My mum asked, “are you not supposed to be wearing gloves when touching other people’s food?”, and the woman replied, “We haven’t been told to do that here so…”
Whilst you are dealing with this daily challenge of Covid-19, do you feel that you have control over whether you catch the virus or not, or spread it? Or do you believe that you are simply at the hands of outside forces?
In a time like this, we must quickly adopt a more internal way of life. In this instance, responsibility for health is in our own hands - especially when there aren’t enough doctors and nurses to take responsibility for us. As our ancestors did during the war, responsibility for the globe’s outcome needs to be taken individually, in order to aid the rest of the world during such turbulent times.
Although, please note that people’s mindsets change between internal and external locus of control all the time, based on differing factors, including what their families are doing, what governments are imposing, but also their deep core values. Some of our mindsets might have changed when the news broke out that Boris Johnson has the virus, but for some of us it would have stayed the same. Over time, people might become less internal and more external or vice versa. However, what this comes down to, is making sure that people are becoming less and less external. With people becoming more reliant on external factors (doctors, nurses, eachother), this is where spreading the virus occurs.
Whilst this might be seen as basic psychology, it enables individuals to understand how and where people place responsibility for their health. This might describe their own actions during this pandemic. So, can an awareness of this psychological phenomenon help people realise what might be affecting their attitudes and actions? And from this awareness, can we make conscious decisions to help the NHS, and ultimately the survival of the economy as we know it?
Most importantly, perhaps, is understanding how we can communicate to these differing mindsets in order to alter behaviours for the better.
