![]() McLaughlin from Harvard University pointed out, the pandemic could be “an opportunity for us to become more committed to supporting and helping one another.” Experts predicted that the shared struggles and experiences that we face due to the pandemic could foster solidarity and bring us closer together, both within our communities and globally. But the three most common categories concerned social and societal issues.ġ. These predictions ranged from better care for elders, to improved critical thinking about misinformation, to greater appreciation of nature. As the graph shows, we identified 20 distinct themes in their predictions. Scientists’ opinions about positive consequences were highly diverse. Though the pandemic has and will continue to create adverse effects for many aspects of our society, the experts observed, there are also opportunities for positive change, if we are deliberate about learning from this experience. The results of this interview series were surprising, both in terms of the variability and ambivalence in expert predictions. Our team used a range of methodological techniques to quantify general sentiment, along with common and unique themes in scientists’ responses. In a series of 57 interviews, we invited scientists, along with futurists, to reflect on the positive and negative societal or psychological change that might occur after the pandemic, and the type of wisdom we need right now. The World after COVID project is a multimedia collection of expert visions for the post-pandemic world, including scientists’ hopes, worries, and recommendations. To complement the voices of journalists, pundits, and policymakers, one of us (Igor Grossmann) embarked on a quest to gather opinions from the world’s leading scholars on behavioral and social science, founding the World after COVID project. Other predictions were brighter-the disruptive force of the pandemic would provide an opportunity to reshape the world for the better, some said. Societal unrest and the rise of totalitarian regimes, stunted child social development, mental health crises, exacerbated inequality, and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression were just a few worries discussed by pundits and on the news.įrom the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being. The opinions of oracles who were not downplaying the virus were mostly negative. Over the past year, some experts proclaimed that the world after COVID would be a completely different place, with changed values and a new map of international relations. Imagining and planning for the future can be a powerful coping mechanism to gain some sense of control in an increasingly unpredictable pandemic life. Neither do we recall much more recent pandemics: the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu from 1968. Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud described Spanish flu as a “ Nebenschauplatz”-a sideshow in his life of that time, even though he eventually lost one of his daughters to the disease. Yet the psychological and societal effects of the Spanish flu, the worst pandemic of the 20th century, were later perceived as less dramatic than anticipated, perhaps because it originated in the shadow of WWI. Prior pandemics have corresponded to changes in architecture and urban planning, and a greater awareness of public health.
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