Effects of an automatized psychological inoculation (PI) intervention on anxiety, resilience and adherence to COVID-19 recommendations

Abstract

Objectives

The covid-19 pandemic calls for adherence to multiple health behaviours. While authorities mostly use health information to deal with these issues, such an approach may be insufficient. This study examined the effects of a cognitive method, namely psychological inoculation (PI) + health information (experimental) versus health information alone (control) on anxiety, resilience and adherence.

Design

A randomized controlled trial was used. Participants were assigned to the experimental or control conditions, all provided on an automatized computerized system.

Main outcome measures

These included anxiety, adherence to the Covid-19 Israeli health ministry’s recommendations, and mental resilience. Participants were assessed before, immediately after and a week after the interventions.

Results

Controls increased only in adherence at 1 week compared to baseline. In contrast, those in the PI increased in resilience and adherence and reported lower anxiety immediately after treatment compared to baseline levels. In the PI condition, degree of refuting challenging sentences correlated with less anxiety.

Conclusions

Results showed better immediate improvements in anxiety, resilience and intention to adhere in the experimental condition compare to the controls. Authorities may wish to add PI to help the public deal with the effects of such a pandemic and to increase adherence to health recommendations.

Keywords:

• Covid-19
• psychological inoculation
• adherence
• resilience
• anxiety
• RCT

Compliance with ethical standards

1. No funding was received. Author A declares that he has no conflict of interest. Author B declares that he has no conflict of interest. Author C declares that he has no conflict of interest.

2. Ethical approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

3. The data have not been made available on a permanent third-party archive; however, can be requested from the lead author.

4. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

5. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

Funding was received from The Ministry of Science and Technology in Israel.