The impact of social isolation and changes in work patterns on ongoing thought during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom.

This data was used to examine how changes to socializing and working during the UK's first national lockdown impacted ongoing thought patterns in daily life. We compared the prevalence of thought patterns (identified using Principal Components Analysis, PCA) between two independent real-world experience-sampling cohorts, collected before- and during lockdown. In both samples, young (18-35 y) and older (55+ y) participants completed experience-sampling measures five times daily for seven days. Dimension reduction (PCA) was applied to these data to identify common “patterns of thought”. Linear mixed modelling compared the prevalence of each thought pattern (i) before- and during lockdown, (ii) in different age groups and (iii) across different social and activity contexts. During lockdown, when people were alone, social thinking was reduced, but on the rare occasions when social interactions were possible, we observed a greater increase in social thinking than prelockdown. Furthermore, lockdown was associated with a reduction in future-directed problem-solving, but this thought pattern was reinstated when individuals engaged in work. Therefore, our study suggests that the lockdown led to significant changes in ongoing thought patterns in daily life and these changes were associated with changes to our daily routine that occurred during lockdown. For full details of how this data was collected, see Mckeown et al (2021), PNAS, The impact of social isolation and changes in work patterns on ongoing thought during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom.

External deposit with Mendeley Data.