Capps Announces Ebola-related Research Grant Funding for UCSB

Rep. Lois Capps announced that researchers at UCSB received a National Science Foundation grant to study the psychological response to the threat of Ebola. The project, titled “RAPID: The Psychology of Fear: Cultural Orientation and Response to Ebola Threat,” received $128,202.

Ebola is one of the deadliest contagious diseases to emerge into the public consciousness in recent years, and it has been a source of much fear globally, despite the fact that the actual risk of contagion is quite low in many parts of the world.

The research will focus on how people differ a great deal in how they perceive their vulnerability to Ebola, and how these different reactions are related to cultural values in large samples of Americans. By knowing the role of cultural values, the researchers believe that they can understand why people react the way that they do. Eventually, researchers hope to figure out more effective ways to cope with the anxiety and stress of disease-related threats. The research is being led by Dr. Heejung Kim in UCSB’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

This research will help us understand how and why people respond the way they do to Ebola or other contagious diseases,” Capps said. “We must take the threat of Ebola seriously, which is why we must ensure that our hospitals are prepared and proper protocol is followed. But we also must make sure that people understand how Ebola is spread and how to protect themselves from exposure. This research will give us a better understanding of the way people respond psychologically to the threat of diseases like Ebola, and how we can help educate that response.”

The threat of Ebola is the threat of the year, but almost every year, people become distressed by a worldwide threat of a disease, such as swine flu or SARS,” said Kim. “With many of these threats, typically, the actual risk is fairly low, but the panic caused by them is usually a lot more costly to our daily and national well-being. And we believe that the findings from our research may be useful in reducing these secondary costs of these contagious diseases.”

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