Coping with Compounding Risk and Uncertainty: A Longitudinal Study of Cascading Collective Stress in a Probability-Based-US Sample

Since 2020, when the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic began, Americans have been coping with a seemingly endless series of escalating stressors, including inflation and economic instability, social unrest, extreme partisanship, climate-related disasters (e.g., flooding, hurricanes, wildfires), global instability (e.g., war in Ukraine), and low confidence in the scientific and social institutions tasked with protecting the public. Such compounding or cascading collective stress/traumas are threats experienced by large groups of people that are often transmitted via the media to people geographically distal to the event. Direct and media-based exposure to these unprecedented cascading collective traumas are likely to have profound effects on the mental and physical health of U.S. residents. The long-term emotional, cognitive, and behavioral implications of these compounding exposures over time remain unknown. In 2020 this research team initiated a study among a large probability-based nationally representative sample of over 6,500 U.S. residents from the NORC AmeriSpeak panel at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and respondents were assessed four times over 3 years. Using this preexisting sample, this new project continues to examine how people respond when exposed to compounding collective stressors while simultaneously coping with individual-level stress and trauma. Four additional surveys (Spring 2023, 2024, 2025, and immediately after a yet unknown collective trauma) and a randomized experiment assess respondents' psychological (e.g., cognitive and affective risk perception, emotions) and behavioral (e.g., protective and prosocial behavior) responses to the compounding crises that occur during the project period. Specifically, in collaboration with NORC, this project seeks to follow a nationally representative probability-based sample of 6,500 pre-recruited participants. Panelists provided mental and physical health data before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Initial data for this project were collected in March-April 2020 during the early weeks of the pandemic in the U.S.; respondents have been surveyed four times in the 3 years prior to this new research. Four additional surveys and a randomized experiment assess respondents' psychological (e.g., cognitive and affective risk perception, emotions) and behavioral (e.g., protective and prosocial behavior) responses to compounding collective crises that occur during the project period. This project examines variability in exposure and response to stress and trauma by accounting for both direct and media-based exposures to individual-level and collective traumas over time. Surveys assess exposure to compounding and cascading collective traumas, co-occurring individual acute and chronic stress, risk perceptions, media use, emotional responses, and self-protective behaviors over 3 years. The project has three aims: (1) Examine how exposure to compounding collective traumas since early 2020 (e.g., pandemic, climate disasters) is associated with psychological (e.g., distress, world views, cognitive and affective risk perceptions) and behavioral (e.g., protective behaviors, civic engagement) responses; (2) Examine whether exposure to individual trauma (lifetime, recent) moderates the association between compounding collective trauma exposure and psychological/behavioral responses, and (3) Examine whether degree of personal stress related to collective stressors moderates the impact of compounding collective trauma exposure on psychological/behavioral responses. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.