Understanding pandemic behaviours in Singapore – Application of the Terror Management Health Model
Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
The novel coronavirus, now known as COVID-19, was first reported in China in December 2019 and became a global crisis by March 2020. Both adaptive and maladaptive behaviours were observed in response to aspects of the crisis, some of which appeared to be contradictory to coping and curbing the threat of COVID-19. For instance, the purchase and use of surgical masks and sanitisers could be understood as logical health-oriented behaviours relevant to coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. The breaching of social distancing measures and forwarding unverified news, however, might have done more harm than good. In applying the proximal and distal defences proposed within the Terror Management Health Model (TMHM), this article suggests explanations for these behaviours as individuals’ attempts to alleviate anxiety arising from reminders of their mortality. Information from local newspapers and media is used to highlight and identify common behaviours observed in the pandemic, and the TMHM is applied to explain these behaviours. This paper briefly concludes with a call for empirical validation of the TMHM for the behaviours observed in relation to COVID-19, and for the use of TMHM conceptualisations to develop countermeasures to reduce maladaptive behaviours in the current, and future, pandemics in Singapore.
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Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies
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26
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1174-4707
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Issue
3
Pages Count
10
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Publisher
Massey University
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