I Need a Doctor, Call Me a Doctor: Attachment and the Evaluation of General Practitioners before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dritjon Gruda and Konstantinos Kafetsios
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Dritjon Gruda: School of Business, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Ireland
Konstantinos Kafetsios: School of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessalonki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 15, 1-11

Abstract: Attachment is a system of threat regulation, and insecure (anxious and avoidant) attachment orientations are important individual difference antecedents to the cognitive and affective attributions of trait inferences. However, little is known about how threat-related contexts, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, influence attachment-related socio-cognitive schemas. Using an experimental research design across two independent samples of 330 (pre-onset of COVID-19) and 233 (post-onset of COVID-19) participants, we tested whether attachment orientations influenced general practitioner (GP) ratings and selection differently pre- and post-onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, when presented with only negative information signals, avoidant individuals attributed positive ratings to GPs, with differing ratings as the number of positive signals increased. Differences between pre- and post-onset of the COVID-19 pandemic were less pronounced with regards to positive signals. We discuss these results in line with signal detection theory (SDT) and provide practical implications in response to our findings.

Keywords: adult attachment; social perception; medical professionals; COVID-19; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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