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. 2021 Jul 26;18(15):7914.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18157914.

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

Dritjon Gruda  1 , Konstantinos Kafetsios  2
Affiliations

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

Dritjon Gruda et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

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: COVID-19; adult attachment; experiment; medical professionals; social perception.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Attachment orientations and doctor rating by signal (pre-and-post the onset of COVID-19). Note: positive signals = sum of displayed high conditions (i.e., picture, ranking of medical school, number of previous patient comments, previous patient rating); secure attachment = low anxious and avoidant; anxious attachment = high anxious/low avoidant; avoidant attachment = low anxious/high avoidant; fearful attachment = high anxious/high avoidant); n = 330 (pre-onset of COVID-19), 223 (post-onset of COVID-19).
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