Joachim Waterschoot
Joachim Waterschoot is a psychologist and statistician, working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University, within the Center for Developmental and Motivational Psychology. In his doctoral research, he examined how people can motivate themselves in challenging circumstances, which led to large-scale research on the role of motivation and psychological basic needs in the population’s behavior and wellbeing during the COVID-19 crisis. In doing so, he mapped how policy decisions and the evolution of the pandemic interacted with people’s psychological functioning. In his current postdoctoral work, he builds on this foundation by studying how societal contexts, such as threat and the nature of policy, affect citizens’ wellbeing and behavior. He combines insights from Self-Determination Theory with large-scale, cross-national data to understand how psychological functioning and societal resilience can be supported sustainably.
Motivation Under Pressure: How Crises Shape Psychological Functioning and Societal Resilience
In his contribution, he will explain the application of psychological frameworks and research in crisis situations, using the COVID-19 crisis as a concrete example. He will discuss the role of motivation, both in terms of its consequences (such as adherence to hygiene measures and the decision whether or not to take the vaccine) and its antecedents (such as psychological basic needs and risk perception). In addition, he will examine how not only policy, but especially the interaction between policy and crisis context, played a role in the population’s wellbeing and motivation, and the crucial significance that motivation had throughout the course of the crisis. Finally, he will briefly reflect on what these insights can teach us for future societal threats, both within and outside the health context.