The role of behavioural sciences in Covid-19

During Covid-19, behavioural science often treated compliance and concern as the rational default, and dissent as a deviation to be corrected. Our paper in Nature Human Behaviour makes the case that people faced real uncertainty and competing values, and that different risk appraisals could have been reasonable given the evidence available at the time. We call for a widening of how the field studies behaviour in future crises, so it builds both short-term compliance and long-term trust. Our paper, Refining the role of behavioural and social sciences in pandemic response post-COVID-19, is here.