Dr. Ungson Publishes Research with Katie and Colleagues

Dr. Ungson and Katie Bucher had a research paper, “Won't you be my neighbor? Local community identification predicted decreased stress over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic,” published in Social and Personality Psychology Compass in May 2023. This is the culmination of years of hard work by the lab, in collaboration with researchers from Lehigh University.

In this paper, Dr. Ungson and Katie demonstrated that social identities are an important resource, especially during times of crisis. They provide shared meaning, as well as access to social and instrumental support. Analyzing survey data on U.S. residents during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, they showed that stress decreased over the first few months of the pandemic, then leveled out as vaccines became more accessible and life started to become more normal. Most importantly, this decrease was more pronounced among people who strongly identified with their local communities. These results held controlling for age, gender, political conservatism, and other variables. This research provides important insights into the importance of social identities, and specifically local communities, during times of crisis.

May 2, 2023