Together with Dr. Steven Sutherland at Essentia Health in Duluth, Lissek proposes a learning-based account of caution fatigue, in which the frequency of effortful behaviors enacted to protect against COVID transmission is reduced over time following occasional lapses in protective behavior that are not followed by one’s contraction of COVID. This is an example of response-outcome learning, in which the omission of a safety response becomes associated with the absence of a negative outcome, increasing one’s sense that the precaution is unnecessary to secure safety.
Composed by Flora Pollack, communications assistant.