departmental bulletin paper

Departmental Bulletin Paper

Text

大阪大学大学院人間科学研究科紀要. 2022, 48, p. 125-145

Japanese

Text

2022-03-18

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to enforcing various restrictions in the daily lives of Japanese people. The catastrophe is ongoing with no foreseen end. The negative infl uence of the pandemic is signifi cant in social institutions. Therefore, many believe that it has also transformed people’s phycological functioning. This paper provides survey-based evidence to evaluate how the COVID-19 disease has transformed the state of social consciousness. I examined the twelve months from the early stage of the outbreak to the continuation period in Japan. Relying on comparative nationwide time series web surveys conducted in March 2020 and March 2021, I examined the temporal change in various aspects of attitudes; psychological distress (K6 scale), life satisfaction, status identification, subjective health, trustfulness, anxiety about the future, and social disparity awareness. The analyses focus on (1) how signifi cant the size of the attitude change during the continuation of the pandemic is, and (2) how the disease transforms the variance of attitudes regarding social attribution, such as gender, age, and education. For the first question, preceding studies demonstrate that the temporal diff erences in attitudes are not as large as predicted by researchers, and the direction of change is not consistently negative. I confirm that such rumbling tendencies are also observed throughout the period I examined. For the second question, I apply a general linear model focusing on the temporal change of the mean variance of each attitude scale among social segments constructed with gender, age, and education. Occupation, job position, household income, marital status, family size, and residential area are introduced to the model as control variables. The results for the eight attitude scales show that the interaction eff ects of the survey period and segments, which I considered, are not statistically significant. This is because the size of the temporal change is not large enough to modify the order of mean diff erences among social segments. I conclude that the COVID-19 disease does not consistently show a negative influence on people’s subjectivity in Japan during the continuation period, and that it has not transformed the societal composition of people’s mentality. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly affects people’s lifestyle. A notable transformation of psychological functioning must be observed, especially when we focus on those suffering from adverse circumstances. However, we should be mindful not to overestimate the transformation of social consciousness when we provide diagnostics for the COVID-19 disease concerning society as a whole.

10.18910/86865

86865

コロナ禍は社会意識を変えたか？ : 2020年3月調査と2021年3月調査の比較分析

吉川, 徹

大阪大学大学院人間科学研究科

Japanese

2022-03-18

大阪大学大学院人間科学研究科紀要

48

125

145

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/86865

10.18910/86865

https://doi.org/10.18910/86865