COVID-19 and the Perceived Dangerousness of Everyday Objects: A Behavioural Online Study in Italy and Germany

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 and efforts to contain it have likely impacted our daily lives, including how we interact with objects. This online study aimed to develop and test a task to measure how different contexts affect our perception of objects, particularly those that were regarded as potentially dangerous. Two pre-registered experiments conducted in Italy and Germany showed how linguistically processed affordances (e.g., nouns) referring to objects perceived as dangerous (such as a door handle during the pandemic) were processed differently than those referring to neutral objects (like a toothbrush) in a sensibility judgement task. This effect was observed across different contexts and in both experiments. Further research is needed to determine if this effect is similar to the processing of negative words, and if it differs between objects with immanent negative properties (like a broken glass or a fire) versus those with potentially negative properties that only emerge in certain contexts. Replications of the study may clarify if the effect was temporary or produced more permanent changes in behaviour.