Submit to IJERPH Review for IJERPH Propose a Special Issue

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

The Role of Human Concepts in Environmental and Public Health

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2022) | Viewed by 9915

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Tyler Davis

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Psychological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-2051, USA
Interests: risk perception; cognitive neuroscience; categories and concepts; zoonosis; food technologies; food policy; attitudes; neuroimaging; neuroscience

Dr. Jessecae Marsh

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA
Interests: categorization; causal reasoning; clinical reasoning; decision making; essentialism; expertise

Dr. Micah Goldwater

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Camperdown NSW 2050, Australia
Interests: analogy; STEM education; categories and concepts; complex systems; dynamic systems; cognitive development; zoonosis; risk perception; decision-making; behaviour change

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on the role of human concepts in environmental and public health. The venue is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. For detailed information about the journal, we refer you to https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph.

Humans are at the center of many current topics in environmental and public health. How we conceptualize and reason about the world around us has effects on how we interact with our environment, respond to public health messaging, and take steps to mitigate environmental and public health risks. For example, our understanding of how diseases can be transmitted from animals to people or from person to person plays a strong role in how people respond to media and public health communications about both communicable and non-communicable diseases, including novel diseases like COVID-19. Likewise, our understanding of climate change and its impact on public health depends on our ability to accurately reason about accumulation and complex dynamical systems. Interestingly, research on human concepts of environmental and public health risks has only recently begun to emerge as potential strategy for influencing health and welfare. This Special Issue will bring together expert research on human concepts, reasoning, and communication to address current topics in environmental and public health. We especially encourage topics related to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

This Special Issue is open to submissions related to all aspects of how people conceptualize and communicate about topics surrounding the environment and public health. We anticipate the Special Issue to include submissions from research groups of diverse backgrounds and to include a range of topics from preventative health concepts surrounding communicable and non-communicable diseases to more global perspectives on human concepts of climate change.

Dr. Tyler Davis
Dr. Jessecae Marsh
Dr. Micah Goldwater
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

disease beliefs
contagion
zoonotic disease transmission
chemical reasoning
climate change
risk perception
vaccination
public health communication
reasoning
decision making

Published Papers (4 papers)

Download All Papers

Research

Jump to: Other

16 pages, 1423 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Pseudoscientific Health Beliefs and the Perceived Frequency of Causal Relationships

by Julie Y. L. Chow, Ben Colagiuri, Benjamin M. Rottman, Micah Goldwater and Evan J. Livesey

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(21), 11196; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111196 - 25 Oct 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2005

Abstract

Beliefs about cause and effect, including health beliefs, are thought to be related to the frequency of the target outcome (e.g., health recovery) occurring when the putative cause is present and when it is absent (treatment administered vs. no treatment); this is known as contingency learning. However, it is unclear whether unvalidated health beliefs, where there is no evidence of cause–effect contingency, are also influenced by the subjective perception of a meaningful contingency between events. In a survey, respondents were asked to judge a range of health beliefs and estimate the probability of the target outcome occurring with and without the putative cause present. Overall, we found evidence that causal beliefs are related to perceived cause–effect contingency. Interestingly, beliefs that were not predicted by perceived contingency were meaningfully related to scores on the paranormal belief scale. These findings suggest heterogeneity in pseudoscientific health beliefs and the need to tailor intervention strategies according to underlying causes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Human Concepts in Environmental and Public Health)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 1295 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Of Pandemics and Zombies: The Influence of Prior Concepts on COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Behaviors

by Jessecae K. Marsh, Nick D. Ungson and Dominic J. Packer

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(10), 5207; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18105207 - 14 May 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3256

Abstract

We use a concepts and categories research perspective to explore how prior conceptual knowledge influences thinking about a novel disease, namely COVID-19. We collected measures of how similar people thought COVID-19 was to several existing concepts that may have served as other possible comparison points for the pandemic. We also collected participants’ self-reported engagement in pandemic-related behaviors. We found that thinking the COVID-19 pandemic was similar to other serious disease outbreaks predicted greater social distancing and mask-wearing, whereas likening COVID-19 to the seasonal flu predicted engaging in significantly fewer of these behaviors. Thinking of COVID-19 as similar to zombie apocalypse scenarios or moments of major societal upheaval predicted stocking-up behaviors, but not disease mitigation behaviors. These early category comparisons influenced behaviors over a six-month span of longitudinal data collection. Our findings suggest that early conceptual comparisons track with emergent disease categories over time and influence the behaviors people engage in related to the disease. Our research illustrates how early concept formation influences behaviors over time, and suggests ways for public health experts to communicate with the public about emergent diseases. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Human Concepts in Environmental and Public Health)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Other

Jump to: Research

12 pages, 315 KiB

Open AccessBrief Report

Mental Models of Illness during the Early Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Mary Grace Harris, Emma Wood and Florencia K. Anggoro

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(11), 6894; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116894 - 4 Jun 2022

Viewed by 1342

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and its profound global effects may be changing the way we think about illness. In summer 2020, 120 American adults were asked to diagnose symptoms of COVID-19, a cold, and cancer, and to answer questions related to the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, time-course, and transmission of each disease. Results showed that participants were more likely to correctly diagnose COVID-19 (91% accuracy) compared to a cold (58% accuracy) or cancer (52% accuracy). We also found that 7% of participants misdiagnosed cold symptoms as COVID-19, and, interestingly, over twice as many participants (16%) misdiagnosed symptoms of cancer as COVID-19. Our findings suggest a distinct mental model for COVID-19 compared to other illnesses. Further, the prevalence of COVID-19 in everyday discourse—especially early in the pandemic—may lead to biased responding, similar to errors in medical diagnosis that result from physicians’ expertise. We also discuss how the focus of public-health messaging on prevention of COVID-19 might contribute to participants’ mental models. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Human Concepts in Environmental and Public Health)

11 pages, 396 KiB

Open AccessConcept Paper

Emerging Zoonotic Infections, Social Processes and Their Measurement and Enhanced Surveillance to Improve Zoonotic Epidemic Responses: A “Big Events” Perspective

by Samuel R. Friedman, Ashly E. Jordan, David C. Perlman, Georgios K. Nikolopoulos and Pedro Mateu-Gelabert

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(2), 995; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19020995 - 17 Jan 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2257

Abstract

Zoonotic epidemics and pandemics have become frequent. From HIV/AIDS through COVID-19, they demonstrate that pandemics are social processes as well as health occurrences. The roots of these pandemics lie in changes in the socioeconomic interface between humanity and non-human host species that facilitate interspecies transmission. The degree to which zoonoses spread has been increased by the greater speed and extent of modern transportation and trade. Pre-existing sociopolitical and economic structures and conflicts in societies also affect pathogen propagation. As an epidemic develops, it can itself become a social and political factor, and change and interact with pre-existing sociobehavioral norms and institutional structures. This paper uses a “Big Events” approach to frame these processes. Based on this framework, we discuss how social readiness surveys implemented both before and during an outbreak might help public health predict how overall systems might react to an epidemic and/or to disease control measures, and thus might inform interventions to mitigate potential adverse outcomes or possibly preventing outbreaks from developing into epidemics. We conclude by considering what “pathways measures”, in addition to those we and others have already developed, might usefully be developed and validated to assist outbreak and epidemic disease responses. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Role of Human Concepts in Environmental and Public Health)

► Show Figures