Social Psychology of Pandemics: Insights From Italian Cause-Seeking During Covid-19

In 2020, over 2 million Italian people contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A pandemic of this magnitude and the very stringent countermeasures that have been adopted had a disruptive effect on people's lives, at a psychological, social, and economic levels. The exploratory study illustrated in this article focuses on the search for causes carried out by people and prompted by the climate of great uncertainty that has characterized the situation so far. In particular, the causal attributions for a possible contagion are examined, which play a key role to improve the effectiveness of the prevention and the management of the contagion. The study has involved 575 participants, who were selected through a snowball sampling technique. Given the exploratory nature of this study, descriptive and chi-square analyses were conducted to ascertain whether respondents' characteristics, such as their socio-demographics, were related to the causal attributions made. The main results highlight a strong overall preference for external causes and significant correlations between the controllability and stability of the causes and the respondents' age and educational level. The results suggest the importance of encouraging cooperation between community agencies and social media, exploiting the latter's ability to spread information, to better manage communication, and improve the quality of information. This intervention may be helpful in that allowing people to better handle information can enhance the people's regular course of information processing and the subsequent attribution of causes to the events, thus reducing fear and anxiety.