Older men less worried about COVID-19, study suggests

A study has discovered that older men may worry less about COVID-19 and may be less inclined to make behavioral changes in response to the pandemic.

New research has found that despite being a more at-risk demographic, older men are likely to worry less and make fewer behavioral changes in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

The study, published in The Journals of Gerontology, concludes that older men may need more education and intervention to make certain that they perceive the risks of COVID-19 accurately.

Worrying about COVID-19

The sudden emergence and rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, plus the risks connected with contracting COVID-19, have necessitated radical changes in people’s everyday life.

Emerging information about the virus has discovered the demographics most vulnerable to a severe a reaction to the virus.

While everyone should be making behavioral changes to reduce the spread of the virus, vulnerable groups have to take extra care, since extreme COVID-19 can be life threatening.

In line with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 8 out of 10 COVID deaths in the United States have already been persons aged 65 and over. Research has also shown that men are in higher risk of a worse disease outcome, including death.

Given this, you can expect that men aged 65 and over could be more cautious and more concerned about the virus. However, previous research has displayed that older men are less inclined to worry about death and their mortality than other demographics.

According to Dr. Sarah Barber, a gerontology and psychology researcher at Georgia State University and corresponding writer of the analysis, “[n]ot only do older adults exhibit less negative thoughts within their daily lives, in addition they exhibit less worry and fewer PTSD symptoms following natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

“In normal circumstances, not worrying as much is a great thing. Everyday life is probably happier if we worry less. However, where COVID-19 can be involved, we expected that lower amounts of worry would result in fewer protective COVID-19 behavior changes.”

The present paper explored whether these known reductions in worry were the same or similar concerning COVID-19 and if this is likely to affect a person’s likelihood of making behavioral changes in response to the virus.

Risk, worry, and behavioral changes

To conduct the research, the authors gathered participants aged 18-35 and 65-81. After excluding participants who had received a diagnosis of COVID-19, the rest of the sample contains 146 younger people (78 women, 68 men) and 156 older persons (74 women, 82 men).

The researchers asked each participant to fill in a questionnaire to assess their relative levels of risk perception, worry, and behavior changes in response to the pandemic.

The researchers assessed the chance by asking if the participants thought persons were over-reacting to the virus and if indeed they thought the virus was no worse than seasonal flu. The participants answered the questions according to a scale of 1 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

To determine worry, the participants answered a number of questions about if they concerned about catching COVID-19 or its unwanted effects on their livelihood. The questionnaire asked the participants to choose one of the following options to point their degrees of worry: (a) never, (b) just a little, (c) a moderate amount, (d) a whole lot, and (e) a good deal.

The questionnaire also posed a series of questions to evaluate behavioral changes. Questions included whether the participants were washing their hands more often, if indeed they were wearing a hygiene mask more often, or if they had stopped shaking hands. For every question, participants could respond either (a) Yes, (b) I am great deal of thought, but not yet doing it, and (c) No.

Less worry and fewer changes

The study found that most of the people were moderately concerned about the pandemic, and 80% of respondents had made behavioral changes in response to it.

However, the analysis also discovered that older men worried significantly less than other participants about COVID-19 and made the fewest changes to their behavior.

Despite these findings, Dr. Barber will not believe the answer is to encourage older men to worry more. As she and co-author Hyunji Kim note, “[w]orry has been connected with increased risk for coronary disease, with poorer physical health, and with greater declines in learning and memory as time passes.”

Dr. Barber thinks it will be easier to ensure older men accurately understand the risks of COVID 19.

“Our study showed that for older men, accurate perception of risk worked along with worry to predict preventive behaviors,” Dr. Barber said.

A precise perception of risk may have improved because the researchers conducted the analysis. Dr. Barber notes that the study took place “immediately after the pandemic was declared, and most of us hope that a more accurate perception of risk has evolved over the last 2 months.”

Nonetheless, the study’s findings indicate the value of ensuring people, particularly older men, have an accurate perception of the risks of COVID-19.