A few months ago, some thought the world had irrevocably changed and the everyday life we knew was unlikely to return. But now it’s hard to resist the high spirits and socializing in the streets and alleys of Copenhagen, where everything seems to be back to normal.
“On the whole, it’s as expected. When the sun comes out, people rush out the door,” says Pelle Guldborg Hansen, behavioral scientist at Roskilde University.
He understands why some people thought everything had changed when things were at their worst, but he has always expected that we would return to our old behavior as the situation normalized.
“When some people talked about how everything has changed and normality will never return, it’s because we speak from the situation we’re in. But the thing about our behavior is that it’s not random. It’s not just like a habit you can break. We adapt to the situation, like when society is shut down, you’re not allowed to be together and can’t go to work, but when the situation becomes normalized, so does our behavior,” says Pelle Guldborg Hansen.
