Lissek Discusses Caution Fatigue in Post Bulletin Article

Shmuel Lissek, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota was quoted in a recent Post Bulletin article entitled “Why 'caution fatigue' is setting in with COVID-19.”  

Together with Dr. Steven Sutherland at Essentia Health in Duluth, Lissek proposes a learning-based account of caution fatigue, in which the frequency of effortful behaviors enacted to protect against COVID transmission is reduced over time following occasional lapses in protective behavior that are not followed by one’s contraction of COVID. This is an example of response-outcome learning, in which the omission of a safety response becomes associated with the absence of a negative outcome, increasing one’s sense that the precaution is unnecessary to secure safety.