Association of Mental Fatigue due to Long-term Restrictive Measures with Reasoning: A COVID-19 Study
Coronavirus Disease 2019 broke out in China at the end of 2019 and spread rapidly around the world. In response, many countries have adopted social distancing and lockdown measures. But restrictive measures resulted in many unwanted psychological consequences, including mental fatigue. Mental fatigue in turn is very likely to cause psychopathological disorders and cognitive malfunctions. A cognitive ability that is likely to be affected by mental fatigue is reasoning, while high reasoning ability is a prerequisite for compliance with restrictive measures. The present study aims to explore the association between mental fatigue and reasoning under the impact of long-term restrictive measures. The findings indicated that mental fatigue correlates negatively with cognitive reflection, while it has no significant association with general reasoning. The results also showed that mental fatigue correlates positively with the misperception of the preventive measures and negatively with the incomprehension of the restrictive measures. The implications of the results have been discussed.