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1 | Entry | Authors | Title | Topic | Finding | About design | Web home | Location of population | Nat's notes | Key 1 | Key 2 | Key 3 | Abstract | Measured actual health behavior? | How? | |||||||||||||||||
2 | 1 | Nassim Tabri, Samantha J. Hollingshead, & Michael J. A. Wohl | Framing COVID-19 as an Existential Threat Predicts Anxious Arousal and Prejudice towards Chinese People | Prejudice, anxiety | Framing COVID-19 as an existential threat (versus not existential) predicted prejudice against Chinese people | https://psyarxiv.com/mpbtr/ | US | bias/prejudice | We tested the hypothesis that perceived existential threat of COVID-19 elicits anxious arousal, which can manifest in prejudice toward the perceived source of the threat (Chinese people). Americans (n = 474) were randomly assigned to an experimental condition in which COVID-19 was framed as an existential threat to the United States or a non-existential threat control condition. They then completed self-report measures of anxious arousal and blatant prejudice towards Chinese people. As expected, participants in the threat (vs. control) condition reported greater anxious arousal which, in turn, predicted greater blatant prejudice. Threat (vs. control) condition also indirectly predicted greater prejudice via greater anxious arousal. Results suggest that COVID-19 existential threat may diminish social capital, which would further degrade people’s health and well-being. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
3 | 2 | Karl Vachuska | Initial Effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Racial Prejudice in the United States: Evidence from Google Trends | Bias against Asian-Americans | https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/bgpk3/ | US | bias/prejudice | In the United States, widespread hostility towards Asian-Americans has unfortunately seemed to define a large component of Americans' response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Utilizing Google Trends data, I examine how sentiment towards minority racial groups has been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. I find strong evidence that Coronavirus had caused an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment, but surprisingly I find that it has caused an even greater increase in anti-Hispanic sentiment. I discuss why this may be and also present evidence that Coronavirus has resulted in discrimination towards Chinese and Mexican restaurants. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
4 | 3 | Vojtech Bartos, Michal Bauer, Jana Cahlikova, & Julie Chytilová | COVID-19 Crisis Fuels Hostility against Foreigners | Outgroup bias | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3593411 | Europe | bias/prejudice | Intergroup conflicts represent one of the most pressing problems facing human society. Sudden spikes in aggressive behavior, including pogroms, often take place during periods of economic hardship or health pandemics, but little is known about the underlying mechanism behind such change in behavior. Many scholars attribute it to scapegoating, a psychological need to redirect anger and to blame an out-group for hardship and problems beyond one’s own control. However, causal evidence of whether hardship triggers out-group hostility has been lacking. Here we test this idea in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the common concern that it may foster nationalistic sentiments and racism. Using a controlled money-burning task, we elicited hostile behavior among a nationally representative sample (n = 2,186) in a Central European country, at a time when the entire population was under lockdown and border closure. We find that exogenously elevating salience of thoughts related to COVID-19 pandemic magnifies hostility and discrimination against foreigners, especially from Asia. This behavioral response is large in magnitude and holds across various demographic sub-groups. For policy, the results underscore the importance of not inflaming racist sentiments and suggest that efforts to recover international trade and cooperation will need to address both social and economic damage. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
5 | 4 | Mark LaCour, Brent Hughes, Micah Goldwater, Molly Ireland, Darrell Worthy, Jason Van Allen, Nick Gaylord, Garrett Van-Hoosier, & Tyler Davis | The double bind of communicating about zoonotic origins: Describing exotic animal sources of COVID-19 increases both healthy and discriminatory avoidance behaviors | Bias against Asian-Americans | Emphasizing zoonotic origins increased bias | Mturk | https://psyarxiv.com/948qn/ | US | bias/prejudice | Many novel diseases are of zoonotic origin, likely including COVID-19. Describing diseases as originating from diverse exotic animals can increase risk perceptions and protective avoidance behaviors, but may also activate stereotypes, increasing discriminatory behaviors and disease stigma. Data from the first several weeks of the US COVID-19 pandemic tested how communications about zoonotic disease origins affect people’s risk perceptions, health behaviors, and stigma. Participants (N = 677) who read news articles describing exotic animals (e.g., snakes) as sources of COVID-19 viewed the virus as riskier and reported stronger intentions to engage in preventative behaviors (e.g., handwashing), relative to those who read about a familiar source (pigs). Reading exotic origin descriptions was associated with stronger intentions to avoid Asian individuals and animal products, both of which contributed to greater stigma for COVID-19. Results have implications for public health communicators who aim to increase risk perceptions without activating stigma or prejudice. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
6 | 5 | Roland Imhoff & Pia Lamberty | A bioweapon or a hoax? The link between distinct conspiracy beliefs about the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak and pandemic behavior | Conspiracy beliefs (hoax versus bioweapon) | https://psyarxiv.com/ye3ma/ | US, UK | conspiracy theories | Exploring the association of distinct conspiracy beliefs (COVID-19 is a hoax; SARS-Cov-2 was human-made) with pandemic-related behavior. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
7 | 6 | Sinan Alper, Fatih Bayrak, & Onurcan Yilmaz | Psychological Correlates of COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs and Preventive Measures: Evidence from Turkey | Conspiracy beliefs | https://psyarxiv.com/mt3p4/ | Turkey | conspiracy theories | COVID-19 pandemic has led to popular conspiracy theories regarding its origins and widespread concern over the level of compliance with preventive measures. In the current preregistered research, we recruited 1,088 Turkish participants and investigated (a) individual differences associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs; (2) whether such conspiracy beliefs are related to the level of preventive measures; and (3) other individual differences that might be related to the preventive measures. Higher faith in intuition, uncertainty avoidance, impulsivity, generic conspiracy beliefs, religiosity, and right-wing ideology, and a lower level of cognitive reflection were associated with a higher level of belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. There was no association between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and preventive measures while perceived risk was positively and impulsivity negatively correlated with preventive measures. We discuss the implications and directions for future research. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
8 | 7 | Simon Dennis, Yoshihisa Kashima, Amy Perfors, Josh White, Paul Garrett, Nic Geard, Daniel Little, Lewis Mitchel, Martin Tomko, Stephan Lewandowsky, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Anastasia Kozyreva, Stefan Herzog, Ralph Hertwig, Klaus Oberauer | Social Licensing of Privacy-Encroaching Policies to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic | Acceptance of collocation tracking | In UK, very similar numbers of people (66-70%) think it's okay | Participants on Prolific; varied whether collocation tracking is optional or mandatory; hope is to make it longitudinal and cross-cultural survey | https://stephanlewandowsky.github.io/UKsocialLicence/index.html | UK, Australia, US, Germany, Taiwan, Spain, Switzerland (analyses in more countries may be added) | contact tracing | Summary of project: The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic may require governments to use big data technologies to help contain its spread. Countries that have managed to “flatten the curve”, (e.g., Singapore), have employed collocation tracking through mobile Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth as a strategy to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Through collocation tracking, Government agencies may observe who you have been in contact with and when this contact occurred, thereby rapidly implementing appropriate measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The effectiveness of collocation tracking relies on the willingness of the population to support such measures, implying that government policy-making should be informed by the likelihood of public compliance. Gaining the social license — broad community acceptance beyond formal legal requirements — for collocation tracking requires the perceived public health benefits to outweigh concerns of personal privacy, security, and any potential risk of harm. This project involves a longitudinal cross-cultural study to trace people’s attitudes towards different tracking-based policies during the crisis. At present, we are planning multiple waves in Australia, Germany, and the U.K. We will have at least one wave in the U.S. and Switzerland, and other countries are expected to participate as well. We aim to understand (1) the factors that influence the social license around governmental use of location tracking data in an emergency, (2) how this may change over time, and (3) how it may differ across cultures. We will present participants with one of two vignettes describing mild or severe Government tracking methods that may reduce the spread of COVID-19, and then question participants’ attitudes towards the proposed methods. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
9 | 8 | Emma Bradshaw, Richard Ryan, Michael Noetel, Alexander Saeri, Peter Slattery, Emily Grundy, & Rafael Calvo | Information safety assurances affect intentions to use COVID-19 contact tracing applications, regardless of autonomy-supportive or controlling message framing | Attitudes toward contact tracing | https://osf.io/5wap8/ | Australia | contact tracing | Promoting the use of contact tracing technology will be an important step in global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study assesses two messaging strategies as motivators of contact tracing use. In a sample of 1117 Australian adults (Mage = 50.17, SDage = 17.46) we examined autonomy-supportive and controlling message framing and the presence or absence of information safety as predictors of intended contact tracing application uptake. Using an online randomized experimental design, we found that autonomy-supportive and controlling message framing did not differentially affect intended uptake. However, there was a main effect of information safety. Those in high information safety conditions reported higher intentions to use the application and to recommend it to others than those in low information safety conditions, regardless of message framing. In these unprecedented circumstances, Australians appeared more willing to assent to authority regarding contact tracing insofar as their data safety can be assured. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
10 | 9 | Baobao Zhang, Sarah Kreps, & Nina McMurry | Americans' perceptions of privacy and surveillance in the COVID-19 Pandemic | Contact tracing apps | Support for apps is rather low (~32%), lower than temperature checks and traditional contact tracing (both ~48%) | https://osf.io/9wz3y | US | contact tracing | political partisanship | As COVID-19 continues to spread, public health authorities have implemented or plan to implement smartphone apps to supplement traditional contact tracing. Experts suggest that at least 60% of the public would need to use these apps for them to be effective at limiting the spread of COVID-19. Yet fears that these apps would violate users' privacy by expanding governments' and tech companies' surveillance capacity may limit adoption. We study Americans' attitudes toward smartphone contact tracing apps and public health surveillance policies using a large, nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N=2,612). We find widespread reluctance among the public: support for contact tracing apps is lower than for expanding traditional contact tracing or introducing new measures like temperature checks and centralized quarantine. Using a conjoint analysis experiment embedded in the survey, we find that privacy-preserving features, including non-location tracking and decentralized data storage, increases the public's acceptance of contact tracing apps. Within the population, those with pre-existing health conditions or who know someone who had been COVID-19 positive were more likely to support the tool, suggesting that support will grow as cases increase. Despite significant partisan splits on most issues, Democrats and Republicans converge on levels of support for contact tracing apps, suggesting that bipartisan elite cues could work to augment support. Overall, we found sizable amounts of concern about privacy and misunderstanding about the technology used. Public education campaigns are much needed before states deploy contact tracing apps. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
11 | 10 | Simon Nicholas, Chris Armitage, Tova Tampe, & Kimberly Dienes | Public attitudes towards COVID-19 contact tracing apps: a UK-based focus group study | Contact tracing apps | Qualitative study (focus groups) | https://psyarxiv.com/ra93b/ | UK | contact tracing | OBJECTIVE: To explore public attitudes to the proposed COVID-19 contact tracing app in the United Kingdom. DESIGN: Qualitative study consisting of five focus groups carried out between 1st-4th May, 2020 (39-42 days after the official start of the UK lockdown). SETTING: Online video-conferencing PARTICIPANTS: 22 participants, all UK residents aged 18 years and older, representing a range of different genders, ages, ethnicities and locations. RESULTS: Participants were split roughly equally in number across three groups: will use the app; will not be using the app; and undecided as to whether they will use the app. Analysis revealed five main themes: (1) Lack of information and misconceptions surrounding COVID-19 contact tracing apps; (2) concerns over privacy; (3) concerns over stigma; (4) concerns over uptake; and (5) contact tracing as the ‘greater good’. These themes were found across the sample and the three groups. However, concerns over privacy, uptake and stigma were particularly significant amongst those state they will not be using the app and the view that the app is for the “greater good” was particularly significant amongst those who stated they will be using the app. One of the most common misconceptions about the app was that it could allow users to specifically identify and map COVID-19 cases amongst their contacts and in their vicinity. CONCLUSIONS: We offer four recommendations: (1) To offset the fact that many people may not be accessing, or might be avoiding, news coverage on COVID-19, authorities must communicate to the public via a range of methods including but not limited to: social media ads, postal information, text messaging and other emergency alert systems. (2) Communications should emphasise that the app cannot enable the user to identify which of their contacts has reported COVID-19 symptoms or tested positive. (3) Communication should emphasise collective responsibility (‘the greater good’) to promote social norms around use of the app (4) Communication should provide a slogan that maximises clarity of message, for example: ‘Download the app, protect the NHS, save lives’. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
12 | 11 | Alberto Ciancio, Fabrice Kämpfen, Iliana Kohler, Daniel Bennett, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Jill Darling, Arie Kapteyn, Jürgen Maurer, Hans-Peter Kohler | Know Your Epidemic, Know Your Response: COVID-19 in the United States | US knowledge | https://repository.upenn.edu/psc_publications/44/ | US | knowledge | We document that during the week of March 10-16, the Covid-19 pandemic fundamentally affected the perceptions of U.S. residents about the health risks and socioeconomic consequences entailed by the pandemic. During this week, it seems, "everything changed." Not only did the pandemic progress rapidly across the United States, but U.S. residents started to realize that the threat was real: increasing Covid-19 caseloads heightened perceptions of infection risks and excess mortality risks, concerns about the economic implications increased substantially, and behavioral responses became widespread as the pandemic expanded rapidly in the U.S. In early to mid-March 2020, average perceptions about the coronavirus infection risks are broadly consistent with projections about the pandemic, while expectations about dying conditional on infection and expectations about Covid-19-related excess mortality during the next months are possibly too pessimistic. However, some aspects of Covid-19 perceptions are disconcerting from the perspective of implementing and sustaining an effective societal response to the pandemic. For instance, the education gradient in expected infection risks entails the possibility of having different perceptions of the reality of the pandemic between people with and without a college education, potentially resulting in two different levels of behavioral and policy-responses across individuals and regions. Unless addressed by effective health communication that reaches individuals across all social strata, some of the misperceptions about Covid-19 epidemic raise concerns about the ability of the United States to implement and sustain the widespread and harsh policies that are required to curtail the pandemic. Our analyses also reveal perceptions of becoming infected with the virus, and dying from Covid-19, were driven upwards by a rapidly increasing national caseload, and perceptions of the economic consequences and the adaptation of social distancing were affected by both national and state-level cases. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
13 | 12 | Peter O. Olapegba, Olusola Ayandele, Samson Olowo Kolawole, Rotimi Oguntayo, Joshua Gandi, Abdullahi Lawal Dangiwa, Iboro Friday Akpan Ottu, & Steven Kator Iorfa | COVID-19 Knowledge and Perceptions in Nigeria | Knowledge | https://psyarxiv.com/j356x/ | Nigeria | knowledge | This study assessed knowledge and perceptions about COVID-19 among the general public in Nigeria during the initial week of the pandemic lockdown in the country. From March 28 to April 4, 2020, this cross-sectional survey used an anonymous online questionnaire to collect data from respondents within Nigeria. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit 1357 respondents, aged 15-70 years, from 180 cities and towns within Nigeria. Study data were analysed using descriptive statistics. Approximately more than half (57.02%) of the respondents were male with high level of education (48.86% bachelor’s degree or higher). Approximately half of the respondents (46.94%) opined that COVID-19 was “a biological weapon designed by the Chinese government.” About 94% of the respondents identified “contact with airborne droplets via breathing, sneezing, or coughing” as the most common mode of transmission; most respondents associated COVID-19 with coughing (81.13%), shortness of breath (73.47%) and fever (62.79%). “Regular hand washing and social distancing” was selected by most respondents (94.25%) as a way of preventing infection whereas 11.86% reported “consuming gins, garlic, ginger, herbal mixtures and African foods/soups” as preventive measures against COVID-19. Majority of the respondents (91.73%) thought COVID-19 is deadly; and most respondents (84.3%) got 4 or more answers correctly. It was also observed that the traditional media (TV/Radio) are the most common source of health information about COVID-19 (93.5%). Findings revealed that Nigerians have relatively high knowledge, mostly derived from traditional media, about COVID-19. Their perceptions of COVID-19 bear implications across public health initiatives, compliance with precautionary behavior as well as bilateral relations with foreign nations. Evidence-based campaign should be intensified to remove misconceptions and promote precautionary measures. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
14 | 13 | Kate Faasse & Jill Newby | Public perceptions of COVID-19 in Australia: perceived risk, knowledge, health-protective behaviours, and vaccine intentions | Risk perception, knowledge, behaviors, vaccination intention | https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.25.20079996v1 | Australia | knowledge | risk perception | vaccination | Widespread and sustained engagement with health-protective behaviours (i.e., hygiene and distancing) is critical to successfully managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Evidence from previous emerging infectious disease outbreaks points to the role of perceived risk, worry, media coverage, and knowledge in shaping engagement with health-protective behaviours as well as vaccination intentions. The current study examined these factors in 2,174 Australian residents. An online survey was completed between 2-9 March 2020, at an early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia. Results revealed that two thirds of respondents were at least moderately worried about a widespread COVID-19 outbreak in Australia (which subsequently occurred). Worry about the outbreak and closely following media coverage were consistent predictors of health-protective behaviours (both over the previous month, and intended behaviours in the case of a widespread outbreak) as well as vaccination intentions. Health-behaviour engagement over the previous month was lower in some demographic groups, including males and younger individuals (18-29 age group). These was a substantial mismatch between respondents' expected symptoms of infection and emerging evidence that a meaningful proportion of people who contract the novel coronavirus will experience asymptomatic infection (i.e., they will not experience symptoms associated with COVID-19). Only 0.3% of those in the current study believed that they personally would not experience any symptoms if they were infected. Uncertainty and misconceptions about COVID-19 were common, including one third of respondents who reported being unsure whether people are likely have natural or existing immunity. There was also uncertainty around whether specific home remedies (e.g., vitamins, saline rinses) would offer protection, whether the virus could spread via the airborne route, and whether the virus was human made and deliberately released. Such misconceptions are likely to cause concern for members of the public. These results point to areas of uncertainty that could be usefully targeted by public education campaigns, as well as psychological and demographic factors associated with engagement with health-protective behaviours. These findings offer potential pathways for interventions to encourage health-protective behaviours to reduce the spread of COVID-19. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
15 | 14 | Emma MW Mohamad, Arina Anis Azlan, Mohammad Rezal Hamzah, Jen Sern Tham, & Suffian Hadi Ayub | Public knowledge, attitudes and practices towards COVID-19: A cross-sectional study in Malaysia | Knowledge, attitudes, NPIs | https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.20085563v1 | Malaysia | knowledge | NPIs | In an effort to mitigate the outbreak of COVID-19, many countries have imposed drastic lockdown, movement control or shelter in place orders on their residents. The effectiveness of these mitigation measures is highly dependent on cooperation and compliance of all members of society. The knowledge, attitudes and practices people hold toward the disease play an integral role in determining a society's readiness to accept behavioural change measures from health authorities. The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge levels, attitudes and practices toward COVID-19 among the Malaysian public. A cross-sectional online survey of 4,850 Malaysian residents was conducted between 27th March and 3rd April 2020. The survey instrument consisted of demographic characteristics, 13 items on knowledge, 3 items on attitudes and 3 items on practices, modified from a previously published questionnaire on COVID-19. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, t-tests and oneway analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted. The overall correct rate of the knowledge questionnaire was 80.5%. Most participants held positive attitudes toward the successful control of COVID-19 (83.1%), the ability of Malaysia to conquer the disease (95.9%) and the way the Malaysian government was handling the crisis (89.9%). Most participants were also taking recautions such as avoiding crowds (83.4%) and practising proper hand hygiene (87.8%) in the week before the movement control order started. However, the wearing of face masks was less common (51.2%). This survey is among the first to assess knowledge, attitudes and practice in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. The results highlight the importance of consistent messaging from health authorities and the government as well as the need for tailored health education programs to improve levels of knowledge, attitudes and practices. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
16 | 15 | Sadia Malik | Knowledge of COVID-19 Symptoms and Prevention among Pakistani Adults: A Cross-sectional Descriptive Study | Knowledge of symptoms & prevention | https://psyarxiv.com/wakmz/ | Pakistan | knowledge | This study encompasses the knowledge of pakistani adult population about the symptoms and prevention of COVID-19 symptoms. The findings revealed that overall, 174 (87%) participants knew about COVID-19; 170 (85 %) believed that the disease is dangerous for elderly or already sick people, and 134(67%) thought that they know about the symptoms 144 (97 %) male and 63 (33 %) were female were aware about the common symptoms of COVID-19 such as fever, cough and tiredness. The current study concluded that there is still a need to improve the awareness of people regarding the symptoms and seriousness of the disease so that people take preventive measure to protect themselves and rapid transmission of the disease could be controlled. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
17 | 16 | Matthew Goldberg, Abel Gustafson, Edward Maibach, Matthew Ballew, Parrish Bergquist, John Kotcher, Jennifer Marlon, Seth Rosenthal, & Anthony Leiserowitz | Mask-wearing increased after a government recommendation: A natural experiment in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic | Mask wearing | People listened to CDC and started wearing masks (+12% from pre- to post-announcement) | Took advantage of the fact that they were collecting data for a large-scale study both before and after the CDC guidelines changed | https://psyarxiv.com/uc8nz/ | US | mask-wearing | On April 3 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all Americans wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement came during the fielding of a large, nationally-representative survey (N = 3,933) of Americans’ COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, providing an opportunity to measure the impact of the CDC’s recommendation on public reported mask wearing and buying behavior. The study found significant increases in reported mask wearing (+12 percentage points) and mask buying (+7 points). These findings indicate the speed with which government recommendations can affect the adoption of protective behaviors by the public. The results demonstrate the importance of national leadership and communication during a public health crisis. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
18 | 17 | Joan Barcelo & Greg Sheen | Voluntary adoption of social welfare-enhancing behavior: Mask-wearing in Spain during the COVID-19 outbreak | Mask wearing | https://files.osf.io/v1/resources/6m85q/providers/osfstorage/5eb263ec877c5e002a3a1b8d?action=download&direct&version=1 | Spain | mask-wearing | With the spread of COVID-19, more countries now recommend their citizens to wear facemasks in public. The uptake of facemasks, however, remains far from universal in countries where this practice lacks cultural roots. In this paper, we aim to iden- tify the barriers to mask-wearing in Spain, a country with no mask-wearing culture. We conduct one of the first nationally representative surveys (n = 4,000) about this unprecedented public health emergency, and uncover the associations of mask-wearing behavior with: a) demographics; b) disease-related anxiety and risk perceptions; c) personality traits; d) social acceptability of mask-wearing. Our results can be useful for policymakers to devise effective programs for improving public compliance. Based on our findings, we suggest the government endeavor to promote mask-wearing to the introverted and the highly educated. The government could advertise mask-wearing as an injunctive norm to encourage their citizens, particularly the elderly, to wear facemasks. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
19 | 18 | Mark Shevlin, Orla McBride, Jamie Murphy, Jilly Gibson Miller, Todd Hartman, Liat Levita, Liam Mason, Anton Martinez, Ryan McKay, Thomas Stocks, Kate Bennett, Philip Hyland, & Richard Bentall | Demographic, Health and Mental Health Predictors of Face Mask Wearing in the UK Population During the COVID-19 Lockdown Period. | Predictors of mask wearing | https://osf.io/mhj59 | UK | mask-wearing | The primary aim of this study was to estimate the rate of face mask use during the COVID-19 pandemic in a representative UK adult population sample and assess its association with demographic, health, and mental health variables. The rate of face mask wearing was 16.7% and was associated with being younger, male, living in an urban environment, having existing health problems, increased perceived risk of COVID-19, depression, traumatic stress, and COVID-19 related anxiety. The number of people prepared to wear face masks needs to increase significantly if the UK government recommends their use. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
20 | 19 | https://behavioralpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/BSP-Journal_Special-Online-Covid_Broomell-Chapman-Downs_2p.pdf | Evaluating COVID-19 Public Health Messaging in Italy: Self-Reported Compliance and Growing Mental Health Concerns1 | Public health messaging in Italy & compliance (self-reported) and mental health | http://expilab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/covid-italy.pdf | Italy | messaging | Purpose: The COVID-19 death-rate in Italy continues to climb, surpassing that in every other country. We implement one of the first nationally representative surveys about this unprecedented public health crisis and use it to evaluate the Italian government’ public health efforts and citizen responses. Findings: (1) Public health messaging is being heard. Except for slightly lower compliance among young adults, all subgroups we studied understand how to keep themselves and others safe from the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Remarkably, even those who do not trust the government, or think the government has been untruthful a bout the crisis believe the messaging and claim to be acting in accordance. (2) The quarantine is beginning to have serious negative effects on the population’s mental health. Policy Recommendations: Communications should move from explaining to citizens that they should stay at home to what they can do there. We need interventions that make staying following public health protocols more desirable, such as virtual social interactions, online social reading activities, classes, exercise routines, etc. — all designed to reduce the boredom of long term social isolation and to increase the attractiveness of following public health recommendations. Interventions like these will grow in importance as the crisis wears on around the world, and staying inside wears on people. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
21 | 20 | Stephen M. Utych & Luke Fowler | Age-based messaging strategies for communication about COVID-19 | Message strategies by age | http://www.journal-bpa.org/index.php/jbpa/article/view/151 | US | messaging | Responding to the COVID-19 crisis across the world has required a massive and sudden shift in human behaviors, with an end goal of slowing the spread of the disease. Importantly, this type of behavioral change requires messaging from governmental agencies and officials. However, we are uncertain about what types of messages are most influential at inducing behavioral change. In this study, we find that messages highlighting the risk to older adults have little additive power in influencing attitudes and behaviors beyond the effect of a broad informational message. However, messages highlighting risks to younger adults, in addition to risks to older adults, make individuals perceive COVID-19 as a more serious threat, though this effect seems to be limited to areas where infection rates are high. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
22 | 21 | Ezra Yoeli, David Rand | A checklist for prosocial messaging campaigns such as COVID-19 prevention appeals | Messaging | Discussion piece: supposedly a checklist of prosocial messages to use in COVD-19 communications | https://psyarxiv.com/rg2x9/ | N/A | messaging | Addressing public good problems typical requires people to adopt behaviors that are personally burdensome but beneficial for society. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been asked to stay home except in extenuating circumstances, maintain social distance, and wash their hands frequently. What is the best way to phrase one’s requests to ensure that people are maximally motivated to adhere? We distill three key insights from the behavioral science literature on social norms to create a simple messaging checklist: communicate the benefit to the community; make the ask unambiguous, categorical, and concise; and generate the impression that others expect compliance. We justify this guidance and illustrate it using practical examples, with a focus on COVID-19 prevention behaviors. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
23 | 22 | Joseph Heffner, Marc Vives, & Oriel FeldmanHall | Emotional responses to prosocial messages increase willingness to self-isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic | Messaging (Prosocial vs. fear) | https://psyarxiv.com/qkxvb/ | US | This is a strange design | messaging | The COVID-19 pandemic may be one of the greatest modern societal challenges that requires widespread collective action and cooperation. While a handful of actions can help reduce pathogen transmission, one critical behavior is to self-isolate. Public health messages often use persuasive language to change attitudes and behaviors, which can evoke a wide range of negative and positive emotional responses. In a U.S. representative sample (N = 955), we presented two messages that leveraged either threatening or prosocial persuasive language, and measured self-reported emotional reactions and willingness to self-isolate. While results show that both types of appeals increased willingness to self-isolate (Cohen’s d = .41), compared to the threat message, the efficacy of the prosocial message was more dependent on the magnitude of the evoked emotional response on both arousal and valence dimensions. This implies that prosocial appeals have the potential to be associated with greater compliance if they evoke highly positive emotional responses. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
24 | 23 | Fumiya Yonemitsu, Ayumi Ikeda, Naoto Yoshimura, Kyoshiro Sasaki, Kaito Takashima, Kun Qian, Yuki Mori, & Yuki Yamada | Warning “Don’t spread” vs. “Don’t be a spreader” to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic | Messaging ("Don't spread" vs. "Don't be a spreader") | [Ongoing] | https://psyarxiv.com/u4z3e/ | Japan | messaging | The spread of COVID-19 is serious, threatening not only health but also life worldwide. To resolve the crisis, governments need to encourage citizens to voluntarily change their behaviour, such as social distancing and self-restraint. This is especially important in those countries where governments cannot stop people going out, congregating, or attending events, or lock down a city legally, as is the case in Japan. Previous research on social cognition has suggested that emphasising self-identity is key to changing a person's behaviour. This study will examine whether reminders that highlight self-identity are effective in controlling behaviour related to the spread of COVID-19: Will those putting greater emphasis on self-identity (‘Don’t be a spreader’) inhibit high-risk behaviours related to infection control better than those using less (‘Don’t spread’)? A two-wave survey of the same participants will be conducted with a one-week interval, during which one of three reminder conditions will be assigned: ‘Don’t spread’ (spreading condition), ‘Don’t be a spreader’ (spreader condition), and no reminder (control condition). Participants will mark their responses to items related to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare guidelines and the number of times per week they go out on a COVID-19 infection prevention scale. Based on the findings, effective and practical ways of designing reminders that encourage people to change their behaviour to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic will be suggested. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
25 | 24 | Valerie Curtis, Robert Dreibelbis, Myriam Sidibe, Jason Cardosi, Jennifer Sara, Chris Bonell, Kaposo Mwambuli, Soma Ghosh Moulik, Sian White, & Robert Aunger | Strategic Thinking in a Pandemic: A Blueprint for Government-Led National Hygiene Communication Campaigns to Combat COVID-19 | Messaging | Review/guide | https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202005.0042/v1 | N/A | Look carefully at this—although they seem to have published a boiled down version at https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2020/05/07/jech-2020-214290.abstract | messaging | vulnerable populations | Whilst large-scale changes in population behaviour are required to reduce the transmission of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic virus, the emergency context is not conducive to the sort of careful communications planning that would normally be required to meet such a task. Rapid strategic communications planning in a pandemic by governments is, however, possible and necessary. Steps include setting up a dedicated communications task force, mobilising partners and resources, developing a creative brief and theory of change and overseeing the creation, testing, roll out and revision of content. In this short guide we argue that a minimum of strategic planning can be undertaken rapidly, and that good use can be made of simple principles of behaviour change, even during pandemics. Our aim here is to provide a blueprint that governments and their partners, especially in low-income settings, can follow to design, coordinate and resource national communications efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. | |||||||||||||||||||||
26 | 25 | Valerio Capraro & Hélène Barcelo | The effect of messaging and gender on intentions to wear a face covering to slow down COVID-19 transmission | Mask wearing, messaging | no differences in self-reported intentions; interestingly, men more than women see mask-wearing as shameful, weak, and stigmatized | threat to "you" x "your family" x "your community" x "your country" | https://psyarxiv.com/tg7vz | US | messaging | mask-wearing | Now that various countries are or will soon be moving towards relaxing shelter-in-place rules, it is important that people use a face covering, to avoid an exponential resurgence of the spreading of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Adherence to this measure will be made explicitly compulsory in many places. However, since it is impossible to control each and every person in a country, it is important to complement governmental laws with behavioral interventions devised to impact people’s behavior beyond the force of law. Here we report a pre-registered online experiment (N=2,459) using a heterogenous, although not representative, sample of people living in the USA, where we test the relative effect of messages highlighting that the coronavirus is a threat to “you” vs “your family” vs “your community” vs “your country” on self-reported intentions to wear a face covering. Results show that focusing on “your community” promotes intentions to wear a face covering relative to the baseline; the trend is the same when comparing “your community” to the other conditions, but not significant. We also conducted pre-registered analyses of gender differences on intentions to wear a face covering. We find that men less than women intend to wear a face covering, but this difference almost disappears in counties where wearing a face covering is mandatory. We also find that men less than women believe that they will be seriously affected by the coronavirus, and this partly mediates gender differences in intentions to wear a face covering (this is particularly ironic because official statistics actually show that men are affected by the COVID-19 more seriously than women). Finally, we also find gender differences in self-reported negative emotions felt when wearing a face covering. Men more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness, and a stigma; and these gender differences also mediate gender differences in intentions to wear a face covering. | |||||||||||||||||||||
27 | 26 | Gordon Pennycook, Jonathon McPhetres, Yunhao Zhang, & David G. Rand | Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy nudge intervention | Misinformation sharing on social media | Participants on Lucid | http://ide.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Covid-19%20fake%20news%20ms_psyarxiv.pdf | US | Published here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797620939054?utm_medium=podcast&utm_source=bcast&utm_campaign=reatsearch | misinformation | social media | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||
28 | 27 | Anneliese Depoux, Sam Martin, Emilie Karafillakis, Raman Preet, Annelies Wilder-Smith, Heidi Larson | The pandemic of social media panic travels faster than the COVID-19 outbreak | Misinformation | Discussion piece | https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam_Martin8/publication/339677530_The_pandemic_of_social_media_panic_travels_faster_than_the_COVID-19_outbreak/links/5e5f84efa6fdccbeba189210/The-pandemic-of-social-media-panic-travels-faster-than-the-COVID-19-outbreak.pdf | N/A | misinformation | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
29 | 28 | Ramez Kouzy, Joseph Abi Jaoude, Afif Kraitem, Molly B. El Alam, Basil Karam, Elio Adib, Jabra Zarka, Cindy Traboulsi, Elie W. Akl, Khalil Baddour | Coronavirus Goes Viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 Misinformation Epidemic on Twitter | Misinformation sharing on social media | https://www.cureus.com/articles/28976-coronavirus-goes-viral-quantifying-the-covid-19-misinformation-epidemic-on-twitter | Tweets in English | misinformation | social media | Background: Since the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, misinformation has been spreading uninhibited over traditional and social media at a rapid pace. We sought to analyze the magnitude of misinformation that is being spread on Twitter (Twitter, Inc., San Francisco, CA) regarding the coronavirus epidemic. Materials and methods: We conducted a search on Twitter using 14 different trending hashtags and keywords related to the COVID-19 epidemic. We then summarized and assessed individual tweets for misinformation in comparison to verified and peer-reviewed resources. Descriptive statistics were used to compare terms and hashtags, and to identify individual tweets and account characteristics. Results: The study included 673 tweets. Most tweets were posted by informal individuals/groups (66%), and 129 (19.2%) belonged to verified Twitter accounts. The majority of included tweets contained serious content (91.2%); 548 tweets (81.4%) included genuine information pertaining to the COVID-19 epidemic. Around 70% of the tweets tackled medical/public health information, while the others were pertaining to sociopolitical and financial factors. In total, 153 tweets (24.8%) included misinformation, and 107 (17.4%) included unverifiable information regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. The rate of misinformation was higher among informal individual/group accounts (33.8%, p: <0.001). Tweets from unverified Twitter accounts contained more misinformation (31.0% vs 12.6% for verified accounts, p: <0.001). Tweets from healthcare/public health accounts had the lowest rate of unverifiable information (12.3%, p: 0.04). The number of likes and retweets per tweet was not associated with a difference in either false or unverifiable content. The keyword “COVID-19” had the lowest rate of misinformation and unverifiable information, while the keywords “#2019_ncov” and “Corona” were associated with the highest amount of misinformation and unverifiable content respectively. Conclusions: Medical misinformation and unverifiable content pertaining to the global COVID-19 epidemic are being propagated at an alarming rate on social media. We provide an early quantification of the magnitude of misinformation spread and highlight the importance of early interventions in order to curb this phenomenon that endangers public safety at a time when awareness and appropriate preventive actions are paramount. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
30 | 29 | J. Scott Brennen, Felix M. Simon, Philip N. Howard, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen | Types, Sources, and Claims of COVID-19 Misinformation | Misinformation sharing on social media | https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-04/Brennen%20-%20COVID%2019%20Misinformation%20FINAL%20%283%29.pdf | Misinformation published in English | misinformation | social media | In this RISJ factsheet we identify some of the main types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation seen so far. We analyse a sample of 225 pieces of misinformation rated false or misleading by fact- checkers and published in English between January and the end of March 2020, drawn from a collection of fact-checks maintained by First Draft News. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
31 | 30 | Syeda Saadia Azim, Arindam Roy, Amitava Aich, Dipayan Dey | Fake news in the time of environmental disaster: Preparing framework for COVID-19 | Misinformation | https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/wdr5v/ | N/A | Not super useful; they discuss misinformation from previous disasters and make a few policy recommendations | misinformation | The increasing trend of environmental disaster due to changing climate has escalated the occurrence of Tsunami, Forest fire, Flood, Epidemics and other extreme health and environmental and hazardous events across the globe. Establishment of effective and transparent communication during the crisis phase is extremely important to reduce the after-effects of the events. In recent times, fake news or news with fabricated content have emerged as major threats of communications during and and post -disaster phase. The present study critically evaluates the nature and consequences of fake news spread during the four major environmental disasters in recent era (Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Keralan Flood, Amazon Forest Fire and African Ebola Epidemic) and prepared a framework for present COVID-19 Pandemic. The criticality and potential threat created by the fake news have been quantified and analyzed through the timeline of news spreading. It has been observed that the adverse impact related to the African Ebola Epidemic was highest due to its multiple fake news origin sites, both online and offline propagation methods, well fabricated content and relatively low effort on containment. However the COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing disaster expected to have a long- drawn impact covering most countries in the world with combined consequences hence it tends to overtake all other events. Policy recommendations have been prepared to combat the spreading of fake news during the present and future environmental disasters. The importance of the study relies on the fact that the number of environmental disasters will increase in future and strategy for risk communication during the time is still not explored adequately. In addition the study will contribute significantly for understanding the present status of information paradigm for COVID-19 and helps in preparing region-specific real-time contingency measures for effective risk communication. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
32 | 31 | Stephan Leitner | On the dynamics emerging from pandemics and infodemics | Pandmedic + infodemic | Discussion piece | https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.08917 | N/A | misinformation | This position paper discusses emerging behavioral, social, and economic dynamics related to the COVID-19 pandemic and puts particular emphasis on two emerging issues: First, delayed effects (or second strikes) of pandemics caused by dread risk effects are discussed whereby two factors which might influence the existence of such effects are identified, namely the accessibility of (mis-)information and the effects of policy decisions on adaptive behavior. Second, the issue of individual preparedness to hazardous events is discussed. As events such as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds complex behavioral patterns which are hard to predict, sophisticated models which account for behavioral, social, and economic dynamics are required to assess the effectivity and efficiency of decision-making. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
33 | 32 | Leonardo Bursztyn, Aakaash Rao, Christopher Roth, & David Yanagizawa-Drott | Misinformation During a Pandemic | Misinformation | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3580487 | US | misinformation | We study the effects of news coverage of the novel coronavirus by the two most widely-viewed cable news shows in the United States – Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both on Fox News – on viewers' behavior and downstream health outcomes. Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February. We first validate these differences in content with independent coding of show transcripts. In line with the differences in content, we present novel survey evidence that Hannity's viewers changed behavior in response to the virus later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson's viewers changed behavior earlier. We then turn to the effects on the pandemic itself, examining health outcomes across counties. First, we document that greater viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic. The relationship is stable across an expansive set of robustness tests. To better identify the effect of differential viewership of the two shows, we employ a novel instrumental variable strategy exploiting variation in when shows are broadcast in relation to local sunset times. These estimates also show that greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with a greater number of county-level cases and deaths. Furthermore, the results suggest that in mid-March, after Hannity's shift in tone, the diverging trajectories on COVID-19 cases begin to revert. We provide additional evidence consistent with misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data. While our findings cannot yet speak to long-term effects, they indicate that provision of misinformation in the early stages of a pandemic can have important consequences for how a disease ultimately affects the population. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
34 | 33 | Aengus Bridgman, Eric Merkley, Peter John Loewen, Taylor Owen, Derek Ruths, Lisa Teichmann, & Oleg Zhilin | The Causes and Consequences of COVID-19 Misperceptions: Understanding the Role of News and Social Media | Misinformation | Exposure to social media but not news media associated with misperception | https://osf.io/6tcdn/ | Canada | misinformation | We investigate the relationship between media consumption, misinformation, and important attitudes and behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. We find that comparatively more misinformation circulates on social media platforms, while traditional news media tend to reinforce public health recommendations like social distancing. We find that exposure to social media is associated with misperceptions about COVID-19 while the inverse is true for news media. These misperceptions are in turn associated with lower compliance with social distancing measures. We thus draw a link from misinformation on social media to behaviours and attitudes that potentially magnify the scale and lethality of COVID-19. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
35 | 34 | Emilio J. C. Lobato, Maia Powell, Lace Padilla, & Colin Holbrook | Factors Predicting Willingness to Share COVID-19 Misinformation | Misinformation | Social dominance orientation predicts likelihood of sharing misinformation | Mturk | https://psyarxiv.com/r4p5z/ | misinformation | We conducted a preregistered exploratory survey to assess whether patterns of individual differences in political orientation, social dominance orientation, traditionalism, conspiracy ideation, or attitudes about science predict willingness to share different kinds of misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic online. Analyses revealed two orthogonal models of individual differences predicting the willingness to share misinformation over social media platforms. Both models suggest a sizable role of different aspects of political belief, particularly social dominance orientation, as predicting tendencies to share different kinds of misinformation, predominantly conspiracy theories. Though exploratory, results from this study can contribute to the formulation of a socio-cognitive profile of individuals who act as vectors for the spread of scientific misinformation online, and can be useful for computationally modeling misinformation diffusion. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
36 | 35 | Corey H Basch, Grace C Hillyer, Zoe C Meleo-Erwin, Christie Jaime, Jan Mohlman, Charles E Basch | Preventive Behaviors Conveyed on YouTube to Mitigate Transmission of COVID-19: Cross-Sectional Study | Preventive behaviors and Youtube | Most Youtube videos (< 1/3) did not cover any of the 7 critical preventive behaviors on the CDC website | https://publichealth.jmir.org/2020/2/e18807/ | N/A (100 most widely viewed videos in English or Spanish) | Note that there was a correction at https://publichealth.jmir.org/2020/2/e19601/PDF | NPIs | social media | Background: Accurate information and guidance about personal behaviors that can reduce exposure to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 are among the most important elements in mitigating the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). With over 2 billion users, YouTube is a media channel that millions turn to when seeking information. Objective: At the time of this study, there were no published studies investigating the content of YouTube videos related to COVID-19. This study aims to address this gap in the current knowledge. Methods: The 100 most widely viewed YouTube videos uploaded throughout the month of January 2020 were reviewed and the content covered was described. Collectively, these videos were viewed over 125 million times. Results: Fewer than one-third of the videos covered any of the seven key prevention behaviors listed on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Conclusions: These results represent an important missed opportunity for disease prevention. | |||||||||||||||||||||
37 | 36 | Vladimira Cavojova, Jakub Šrol, Eva Mikušková | Scientific reasoning as a predictor of health-related beliefs and behaviors in the time of COVID-19 | Scientific reasoning and health behaviors | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1359105320962266?casa_token=dy_bwB9z4gwAAAAA%3AgDnPXHS0A8QS7NiOUCb46o2EptI6kdki9GPR6_Udwi47_lc2Xxc0Mzh2zUGMraT24HOx2hwmgHsR | Seems to be Slovakia but not explicitly stated | Is this showing a Kahan-like ironic effect of reasoning ability? | NPIs | We examined whether scientific reasoning predicts health-related beliefs and behaviors over and above the general analytic thinking ability in general public (N = 783, aged between 18 – 84 years). Health-related beliefs included: the anti-vaccination attitudes, conspiracy beliefs related to the COVID-19 disease, and some generic epistemically suspect beliefs related to health. Scientific reasoning predicted generic pseudoscientific and conspiracy beliefs related to health and also conspiracy beliefs related specifically to COVID-19. Crucially, scientific reasoning was a stronger independent predictor of unfounded beliefs (including anti-vaccination attitudes) than general analytic thinking, however, its role in the health-related behaviors was more modest. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
38 | 37 | Johannes Haushofer & C. Jessica E. Metcalf | Evaluating NPIs | Discussion piece | http://www.princeton.edu/haushofer/publications/Haushofer_Metcalf_Corona_2020-04-19.pdf | N/A | NPIs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
39 | 38 | Bibing Dai, Di Fu, Guangteng Meng, Qi Li, & Xun Liu | The effects of governmental and individual predictors on COVID-19 protective behaviors in China: a path analysis model | Information transparency | https://psyarxiv.com/hgzj9/ | China | NPIs | The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged the world into a crisis. To contain the crisis, it is essential to build full cooperation between the government and the public. However, it is unclear which governmental and individual factors are the determinants and how they interact on protective behaviors against COVID-19. To resolve this issue, this study built a multiple mediation model and found government emergency management as information transparency and positive propaganda had more important impacts on protective behaviors than refuting rumors and supplies. Moreover, governmental factors could indirectly affect protective behaviors through individual factors such as perceived control, positive emotions, and risk perception. These findings suggest that systematic intervention programs for governmental factors need to be integrated with individual factors to finally achieve effective prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic among the public. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
40 | 39 | Jean-François Daoust, Richard Nadeau, Ruth Dassonneville, Erick Lachapelle, Éric Bélanger, Justin Savoie, & Clifton van der Linden | How to survey citizens’ compliance with COVID-19 public health measures? Evidence from three survey experiments | Improving self-reports of mitigation measure compliance | https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/gursd/ | Canada | NPIs | The extent to which citizens comply with newly-enacted public health measures such as social distancing or lockdowns strongly affects the propagation of the virus and the number of deaths from COVID-19. It is however very difficult to identify non-compliance through survey research because claiming to follow the rules is socially desirable. Using three survey experiments, we examine the efficacy of different “face-saving” questions that aim to reduce social desirability in the measurement of compliance with public health measures. Our treatments soften the social norm of compliance by way of a short preamble in combination with a guilty-free answer choice making it easier for respondents to admit non-compliance. We find that self-reported non-compliance increases by up to 11 percentage points when making use of a face-saving question. Considering the current context and the importance of measuring non-compliance, we argue that researchers around the world should adopt our most efficient face-saving question. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
41 | 40 | Amy Nivette, Denis Ribeaud, Aja Murray, Annekatrin Steinhoff, Laura Bechtiger, Urs Hepp, Lilly Shanahan, & Manuel Eisner | Non-compliance with COVID-19-related public health measures among young adults: Insights from a longitudinal cohort study | Compliance with mitigation guidelines among young people | https://osf.io/8edbj | Switzerland | NPIs | trust | Background: Do young adults have low compliance rates with public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)? This paper leverages a prospective-longitudinal cohort study with data before and during the pandemic to examine this question. Methods: Data came from an ongoing cohort study (n=737). Non-compliance with public health measures and concurrent correlates were measured at age 22. Antecedent sociodemographic, social, and psychological factors were measured at ages 15-20. Findings: Young adults generally complied with COVID-19 public health measures, although compliance with some measures (e.g., cleaning/disinfecting mobile phones, standing 1.5-2 meters apart) was relatively lower. Non-compliance, especially with hygiene-related measures, was more prevalent in males, and in individuals with higher education, higher SES, and a non- migrant background. Non-compliance was associated with “antisocial potential,” including pre-pandemic low acceptance of moral rules, legal cynicism, low shame/guilt, low self-control, engagement in delinquent behaviors, and association with delinquent peers. Young adults with low trust, including in the government’s measures for fighting the virus, also complied less. Interpretation: In order to increase voluntary compliance with COVID-19 measures, public health campaigns should implement strategies that foster moral obligation and trust in authorities, or leverage trustworthy individuals in the community to disseminate information. For young adults with low self-control, self-monitoring, environmental restructuring, or nudging may increase compliance. Long-term investments into integrating antisocial youth into society may decrease rule-breaking behaviors, including during pandemics when compliance saves lives. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
42 | 41 | Matthew Goldberg, Abel Gustafson, Edward Maibach, Sander van der Linden, Matthew Ballew, Parrish Bergquist, John Kotcher, Jennifer Marlon, Seth Rosenthal, & Anthony Leiserowitz | Social norms motivate COVID-19 preventive behaviors | Social distancing, social norms | Social norms (perceived behaviors of others, perceived importance to others of the behaviors) predict likelihood of self-reported use of NPIs | https://psyarxiv.com/9whp4/ | US | NPIs | In this working paper, we used a large national survey of American adults (N = 3,933) to estimate the effect of perceived social norms among friends and family (i.e., how often friends and family perform preventive behaviors, and whether they think it is important for the respondent to do so) on people’s own COVID-19 preventive behaviors. We found that perceived norms within these close relationships are often strongly associated with the adoption of preventive behavior--in some cases more than doubling the odds that an individual will engage in a given behavior. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
43 | 42 | Sarah Blake & Thoai Ngo | Rapid review of community engagement and social mobilization strategies for COVID-19 response: Study description | Community engagement, social mobilization strategies | [Ongoing] | Review | https://knowledgecommons.popcouncil.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2021&=&context=departments_sbsr-pgy&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscholar%253Fstart%253D40%2526q%253D%252522covid-19%252522%252B%252Bbehavioral%2526hl%253Den%2526scisbd%253D1%2526as_sdt%253D0%252C22#search=%22covid-19%20behavioral%22 | N/A | Keep an eye on this | NPIs | vulnerable populations | This document describes the background and methodology for a rapid review of evidence on interventions intended to mobilize community-level action to control infectious disease outbreaks in low resource and humanitarian contexts. The primary aims of this project are to provide a critical analysis of current evidence on community engagement in preparing for or responding to infectious disease outbreaks and other emergencies; and to identify approaches and practices that can inform efforts to address COVID-19-related risks in low resource settings. In addition to documenting lessons and potential good practices from past crises, we will identify critical gaps in current evidence. | ||||||||||||||||||||
44 | 43 | Robert West, Susan Michie, G. James Rubin, & Richard Amlôt | Applying principles of behaviour change to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission | Behavior change | Discussion piece | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0887-9.pdf | N/A | Long on theory, short on specifics; noteworthy that they found no studies whatsoever on how to reduce face-touching | NPIs | Human behaviour is central to transmission of SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and changing behaviour is crucial to preventing transmission in the absence of pharmaceutical interventions. Isolation and social distancing measures, including edicts to stay at home, have been brought into place across the globe to reduce transmission of the virus, but at a huge cost to individuals and society. In addition to these measures, we urgently need effective interventions to increase adherence to behav- iours that individuals in communities can enact to protect themselves and others: use of tissues to catch expelled droplets from coughs or sneezes, use of face masks as appropriate, hand-washing on all occasions when required, disinfecting objects and surfaces, physical distancing, and not touching one’s eyes, nose or mouth. There is an urgent need for direct evidence to inform development of such interventions, but it is possible to make a start by applying behavioural science methods and models. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
45 | 44 | Christian E. Lopez, Malolan Vasu, Caleb Gallemore | Understanding the perception of COVID-19 policies by mining a multilanguage Twitter dataset | Beliefs about COVID-19 policies | Twitter natural language analysis | https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.10359 | Uses tweets from all over the world | policies | The objective of this work is to explore popular discourse about the COVID-19 pandemic and policies implemented to manage it. Using Natural Language Processing, Text Mining, and Network Analysis to analyze corpus of tweets that relate to the COVID-19 pandemic, we identify common responses to the pandemic and how these responses differ across time. Moreover, insights as to how information and misinformation were transmitted via Twitter, starting at the early stages of this pandemic, are presented. Finally, this work introduces a dataset of tweets collected from all over the world, in multiple languages, dating back to January 22nd, when the total cases of reported COVID-19 were below 600 worldwide. The insights presented in this work could help inform decision makers in the face of future pandemics, and the dataset introduced can be used to acquire valuable knowledge to help mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
46 | 45 | Mario Gollwitzer, Christine Platzer, Clarissa Zwarg, Anja Göritz | Public Acceptance of Potential Covid-19 Lockdown Scenarios | Acceptance of lockdown scenarios | Length of lockdown more important than intensity; 50% of respondents reject additional lockdowns | https://psyarxiv.com/3a85z/ | Germany | policies | Most countries have implemented nationwide lockdown policies aimed to decelerate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Epidemiologists have recently discussed scenarios according to which these policies would need to be extended and/or intensified. To illuminate how the general public might react to such scenarios, we assessed Germans’ endorsement of and compliance with five specific scenarios. Results show that, in general, length of lockdown plays a more important role than intensity. Although half of the respondents reject any further extensions or intensifications, 20% would endorse long-term strategies if necessary. Simulations predicting the effects of different lockdown scenarios should take the public’s endorsement of and compliance with these scenarios into account. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
47 | 46 | Thomas Safford & Lawrence Hamilton | Views of a Fast-Moving Pandemic: A Survey of Granite Staters’ Responses to COVID-19 | Beliefs about COVID-19 policies | https://scholars.unh.edu/carsey/396/ | US (New Hampshire) | policies | trust | In this brief, authors Thomas Safford and Lawrence Hamilton report the results of a Granite State Panel survey (March 17-26), asking New Hampshire residents about their views concerning government responses to the coronavirus (COVID-19) and whether they changed their daily routine because of the pandemic. They report that New Hampshire residents who approve of President Trump’s handling of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and those who regularly watch Fox News are less likely than others to have made major changes in their routines due to COVID-19. Granite Staters have polarized opinions about President Trump’s handling of the pandemic: 40 percent strongly or somewhat approve, and 56 percent strongly or somewhat disapprove. Just 4 percent express more neutral views. Governor Sununu’s response to COVID-19 is viewed more positively—67 percent strongly or somewhat approve, and only 13 percent strongly or somewhat disapprove—but 20 percent express more neutral opinions. A large majority (77 percent) say they trust science agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control for information about the coronavirus. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
48 | 47 | Alexis A. Doyle, Mollie S.H. Friedlander, Grace D. Li, William Marble, Courtney J. Smith, Nitisha Baronia, Christopher R. Calkins, Trillium Chang, Mallory Harris, Seth Kolker, Abd Al-Rahman Traboulsi, Amanda D. Zerbe, Malathi Srinivasan | The Evidence and Tradeoffs for a 'Stay-at-Home' Pandemic Response: A Multidisciplinary Review Examining the Medical, Psychological, Economic and Political Impact of 'Stay-at-Home' Implementation in America | Stay-at-home orders costs versus benefits | Literature review | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3578841 | N/A | policies | As of mid-April, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has infected over 2 million people and resulted in nearly 150,000 deaths worldwide. This pandemic is principally a global health emergency, but the disease burden unavoidably impacts social dynamics and economic stability. While many countries have acted with swift and unified responses aimed at curbing exponential spread of the virus, pandemic interventions in the United States have been decentralized, particularly in the implementation of stay-at-home orders. To date, 8 states have not enacted statewide shelter-in-place measures and the country lacks a cohesive plan for lifting established stay-at-home orders. A thorough accounting of the evidence surrounding the impacts of stay-at-home measures can help guide both policy decisions and individuals’ actions. In this essay, we provide a multidisciplinary review of the effects and implementation of stay-at-home orders. We examine the epidemiological, health, economic, political, and legal issues relevant to assessing the costs and benefits of stay-at-home orders. We conclude that the evidence is in favor of implementing stay-at-home orders and maintaining them for the near future. The burden of these measures is less onerous than the health, economic, and political consequences associated with an acute spike in infections that would result from prematurely lifting aggressive public health interventions. To our knowledge, we present the most in-depth review of the evidence necessary to rigorously evaluate the full breadth of societal consequences associated with stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
49 | 48 | Susumo Cato, Takashi Iida, Kenji Ishida, Asei Ito, & Kenneth Mori McElwain | The Effect of Soft Government Directives About COVID-19 on Social Beliefs in Japan | Beliefs about policies (soft government directives) | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3577448 | Japan | policies | This paper examines the effects of non-binding government directives about COVID-19 on individual preferences. We employ an online survey in Japan, which includes a public health warning in Tokyo as a natural experiment. We show that the directive is effective in increasing individual pessimism/caution, even without legal enforcement. However, the effect is heterogeneous on crucial characteristics: those who are healthy or have not experienced product shortages are less likely to modify their beliefs. This illustrates the importance of catering policy messaging to specific subpopulations. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
50 | 49 | Thiemo Fetzer, Marc Witte, Lukas Hensel, Jon Jachimowicz, Johannes Haushofer, Andriy Ivchenko, Stefano Caria, Elena Reutskaja, Christopher Roth, Stefano Fiorin, Margarita Gómez, Gordon Kraft-Todd, Friedrich Götz, & Erez Yoeli | Perceptions of an Insufficient Government Response at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic are Associated with Lower Mental Well-Being | Beliefs about policies | https://psyarxiv.com/3kfmh | Multinational (58 countries) | policies | We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—between March 20 and April 7—to explore how beliefs about citizens’ and government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic affected mental well-being. Our analyses reveal three findings. First, many respondents indicate that their country’s citizens and government’s response was insufficient. Second, respondents’ perception of an insufficient public and government response and handling is associated with lower mental well-being. Third, we exploit time variation in country-level lockdown announcements, both around the world and through an event-study in the UK, and find that strong government actions—e.g., announcing a nationwide lockdown—were related to an improvement in respondents’ views of their fellow citizens and government, and to better mental well-being. These findings suggest that policy-makers may not only need to consider how their decisions affect the spread of COVID-19, but also how such choices influence the mental well-being of their population. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
51 | 50 | Alessandro Romano, Chiara Sotis, Goran Dominioni, & Sebastián Guidi | COVID-19 Data: The Logarithmic Scale Misinforms the Public and Affects Policy Preferences | Information presentation (log versus linear plots), policy preferences | Note they include confidence judgments with their measures of understanding of the data (incl. predicted deaths 1 week later) | https://psyarxiv.com/42xfm/ | US | policies | information presentation | Mass media routinely present data on COVID-19 diffusion using either a log scale or a linear scale. We show that the scale adopted on these graphs has important consequences on how people understand and react to the information conveyed. In particular, we find that when we show the number of COVID-19 related deaths on a logarithmic scale, people have a less accurate understanding of how the pandemic has developed, make less accurate predictions on its evolution, and have different policy preferences than when they are exposed to a linear scale. Consequently, merely changing the scale can alter public policy preferences and the level of worry, despite the fact that people are exposed to a lot of COVID-19 related information. Reducing misinformation can help improving the response to COVID-19, thus, mass media and policymakers should always describe the evolution of the pandemic using a graph on a linear scale, or at least they should show both scales. More generally, our results confirm that policymakers should not only care about what information to communicate, but also about how to do it, as even small differences in data framing can have a significant impact. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
52 | 51 | Christopher Adolph, Kenya Amano, Bree Bang-Jensen, Nancy Fullman, John Wilkerson | Pandemic Politics: Timing State-Level Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19 | Political partisanship and social distancing policy | Timing of implementation of social distancing policy varies with governors' political party | https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20046326v1 | US | political partisanship | Social distancing | policies | Social distancing policies are critical but economically painful measures to flatten the curve against emergent infectious diseases. As the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 spread throughout the United States in early 2020, the federal government issued social distancing recommendations but left to the states the most difficult and consequential decisions restricting behavior, such as canceling events, closing schools and businesses, and issuing stay-at-home orders. We present an original dataset of state-level social distancing policy responses to the epidemic and explore how political partisanship, COVID-19 caseload, and policy diffusion explain the timing of governors' decisions to mandate social distancing. An event history analysis of five social distancing policies across all fifty states reveals the most important predictors are political: all else equal, Republican governors and governors from states with more Trump supporters were slower to adopt social distancing policies. These delays are likely to produce significant, on-going harm to public health. | |||||||||||||||||||||
53 | 52 | Craig Harper, Liam Satchell, Dean Fido, Robert Latzman | Functional fear predicts public health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic | Antecedents of safety behaviors | Fear but not moral foundation or political orientation predicts positive behavior change (self-reported) | https://psyarxiv.com/jkfu3/ | 324 participants, 79% living in UK | political partisanship | Social distancing | In the current context of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), health professionals are working with social scientists to inform government policy on how to slow the spread of the virus. An increasing amount of social scientific research has looked at the role of public message framing, for instance, but few studies have thus far examined the role of individual differences in emotional and personality-based variables in predicting virus-mitigating behaviors. In this study we recruited a large international community sample (N = 324) to complete measures of self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, fear of the virus, moral foundations, political orientation, and behavior change in response to the pandemic. Consistently, the only predictor of positive behavior change (e.g., social distancing, improved hand hygiene) was fear of COVID-19, with no effect of politically-relevant variables. We discuss these data in relation to the potentially functional nature of fear in global health crises. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
54 | 53 | John M. Clements | Knowledge and behaviors toward COVID-19 among U.S. residents during the early days of the pandemic | Partisan differences in COVID-19 responses | https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048967v1 | US | political partisanship | knowledge | Abstract Objective: To test the hypothesis that knowledge of COVID-19 influences participation in different behaviors including self-reports of purchasing more goods than usual, attending large gatherings, and using medical masks. Methods: Cross-sectional online survey of 1,034 U.S. residents age 18+ conducted on March 17, 2020. Results: For every point increase in knowledge, the odds of participation in purchasing more goods (OR=0.88, 95% CI:0.81-0.95), attending large gatherings (OR=0.87, 95%CI: 0.81-0.93), and using medical masks (OR=0.56, 95% CI:0.50-0.62) decreased by 12%, 13%, and 44%, respectively. Gen X and Millennial participants had 56% to 76% higher odds, respectively, of increased purchasing behavior, compared to Baby Boomers. Results suggest politicization of response recommendations. Democrats had 30% lower odds of attending large gatherings (OR=0.70, 95% CI:0.50-0.97), and 48% lower odds of using medical masks (OR=0.52, 95% CI:0.34-0.78), compared to Republicans. Conclusions: This survey is one of the first attempts to study determinants of knowledge and behaviors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. A national, coordinated effort at pandemic response may ensure better compliance with behavioral recommendations to address this public health emergency. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
55 | 54 | Shana Kushner Gadarian, Sara Wallace Goodman, & Thomas B. Pepinsky | Knowledge and behaviors toward COVID-19 among U.S. residents during the early days of the pandemic | Partisan differences in COVID-19 responses | "...political differences are the single most consistent factor that differentiates’ Americans health behaviors and policy preferences" | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3562796 | US | political partisanship | Individual choices made during the 2020 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic shape the course of the virus’s spread and the risks facing human populations. Yet the response to COVID-19 in the United States has been deeply political, and elite messaging from the administration of President Donald J. Trump may have produced a differential mass public health response among his supporters. To estimate the extent of these differences, we conducted an original survey of 3,000 American citizens between March 20-23 to collect data on health behavior, attitudes, and opinions about how to respond to the crisis. Measuring partisanship as party affiliation, intended 2020 Presidential vote, and self-placed ideological positioning, we find that political differences are the single most consistent factor that differentiates’ Americans health behaviors and policy preferences. These results suggest that in the United States, public health messaging must deliberately transcend political cleavages in order to produce widely shared pro-social health behavior. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
56 | 55 | John Manuel Barrios & Yael V. Hochberg | Risk Perception Through the Lens of Politics in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic | Partisan differences in COVID-19 responses | Nice design | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3568766 | US | political partisanship | Even when — objectively speaking — death is on the line, partisan bias still colors beliefs about facts. We use data on internet searches as well as proprietary data on county-level average daily travel distance and visits to non-essential businesses from a large sample of U.S. smartphones at the daily level and show that the higher the percentage of Trump voters in a county, holding all else equal, the lower the perception of risk associated with the COVID-19 virus and the lower the level of social distancing behavior exhibited. As Trump vote share rises, individuals search less for information on the virus, they search less for information about unemployment benefits, and they exhibit lower reductions in both their daily distance traveled and their visits to non-essential businesses. Risk perceptions in areas with high Trump vote shares increase in these areas only after 3/9/20, when it was announced that COVID-19 had struck the Conservative Political Action Committee meetings and conservative politicians were self-quarantined, suggesting that their risk perceptions are affected not by changes in fundamental underlying risk, but rather by political-related interpretations of the risk. These patterns persist even in the face of state-level mandates to close schools and non-essential businesses and to “stay home-work safe,” and reverse only when the White House releases federal social distancing guidelines on March 16th. This differential is present even in the face of similar levels of ability to telework and in the presence of higher levels of older population at risk. Our results suggest that political partisanship may play a role in determining risk perceptions in a pandemic, with potentially significant externalities for public health outcomes. Relying solely on compliance with voluntary suggested measures in the presence of different political views on the crisis may have limited effectiveness; instead, enforcement may be required to successfully flatten the curve. | 1 | Movement data | |||||||||||||||||||||
57 | 56 | Gordon Pennycook, Jonathon McPhetres, Bence Bago, David Rand | Attitudes about COVID-19 in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.A.: A novel test of political polarization and motivated reasoning | Partisan differences in COVID-19 responses versus "cognitive sophistication" | https://psyarxiv.com/zhjkp/ | US, UK, Germany | political partisanship | The COVID-19 pandemic has become more political in the U.S.A. than in similar Western countries, allowing for a novel test of attitude polarization. Furthermore, past work disagrees about the role of cognitive sophistication (relative to ideology) in the formation of science beliefs. We therefore investigated the roles of political ideology and cognitive sophistication in explaining COVID-19 attitudes across the U.S.A. (N=689), the U.K. (N=642), and Canada (N=644). Polarization was greater in the U.S. than in the U.K., but not Canada. Furthermore, in all three countries, cognitive sophistication correlated negatively with misperceptions – and in fact was a stronger predictor than political ideology. We also found no evidence that cognitive sophistication was associated with increased polarization, contrary to identity-protective cognition accounts of motivated reasoning. Thus, although there is some evidence for political polarization, accurate beliefs about COVID-19 were broadly associated with the quality of one’s reasoning regardless of political polarization. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
58 | 57 | Gerard J. Tellis, Nitish Sood, & Ashish Sood | Why Did US Governors Delay Lockdowns Against COVID-19? Disease Science vs Learning, Cascades, and Political Polarization | Political partisanship, predictors of governors' ordering lockdowns | Political partisanship, social learning, and actions of neighboring governors predicted timing; percentage of state population infected had a weak effect | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3575004 | US | political partisanship | policies | As COVID-19 ravaged the US in the first quarter of 2020, the US lacked a uniform mandatory policy for containing its spread. Governors facing enormous opposing pressures from businesses and medical professionals adopted various policies, especially lockdowns. The authors statistically analyze the ensuing variance in governors’ decisions as a function of four predictors and several control variables. They draw their four predictors from medical science and behavioral theories of political polarization, social learning, and information cascades. The conventional wisdom is that, following medical science, governors ordered lockdown primarily on the percent of their state’s population infected with COVID-19. Contrary to this premise, the authors find other variables have higher influence including the following: 1) The political affiliation of the governor had a big effect on the hazard of a lockdown – on any day, a democratic governor was three times more likely than a republican governor to order a lockdown. 2) Social learning played an important role. Governors of states afflicted later by COVID-19 acted much faster than those who were afflicted earlier; for every day later COVID-19 started in a state, a governor was 1.4 times more likely to order a lockdown. 3) Actions of some governors triggered mini-cascades, sparking multiple governors to order lockdowns in their states in the next three days. 4) The percentage of the state’s population infected with COVID-19 (a measure of belief in the science of disease transmission) had a weak effect on the governors’ decisions. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
59 | 58 | Hohjin Im, Christopher Ahn, Peiyi Wang, & Chuansheng Chen | An Early Examination: Psychological, Health, and Economic Correlates and Determinants of Social Distancing Amidst COVID-19 | Political partisanship and social distancing | N = 83,944 | https://psyarxiv.com/9ravu/ | US (all 50 states) | political partisanship | Social distancing | With the exponential spread of COVID-19 across the United States, federal and local government agencies have issued orders for residents to shelter-in-place. This study utilizes data collected from Unacast Inc. spanning observations of 3,142 counties across 50 states and the District of Columbia from March 8, 2020 to April 17, 2020 (N = 122,918) in a 3-level multilevel model to examine the correlates of social distancing behavior, as measured by the percentage reduction in 1) distance traveled, 2) non-essential visitations, and 3) the frequency of encounters with other people (i.e., human encounters) since pre-COVID-19 times. Results indicate that at the county-level, population and the proportion of Democrats were positively related to all measures of social distancing while the average education attainment was only positively related to travel-related social distancing. County vaccination rates, proportion of fair/poor health, and income inequality were positively related to reduction in non-essential visitations while unemployment rate was positively related to reduction in distance traveled. State-level neuroticism and cultural tightness were positively related to reduction in distance traveled and human encounters, but health and economic state variables yielded little to no effect across all county-level social distancing measures. Implications of findings and future directions are discussed. | 1 | Movement data | ||||||||||||||||||||
60 | 59 | Eric van Holm, Jake Monaghan, Dan C. Shahar, JP Messina, & Chris Suprenant | The Impact of Political Ideology on Concern and Behavior During COVID-19 | Political partisanship | Mturkers | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3573224 | US | political partisanship | Beliefs about objective matters of fact are caused in no small part by political identity. This includes beliefs regarding the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic, which tend to align with ideological commitments. These linkages between beliefs and political identity matter for behavior, and not just in the voting booth. Decisions about whether (and how) to adopt measures like social distancing rely in part upon how one evaluates the seriousness of the risk posed by the virus. In this paper we investigate the relationship between one’s political ideology, sources of information and news consumption, and COVID-19 oriented behavioral changes. We find that liberals and moderates make fewer trips than conservatives and are more likely to change their behavior in ways suggested by government recommendations and guidelines. The results further show little effect of state-level orders, but we do find some indication that concern about COVID-19, and beliefs about the behavior of others can predict behavior changes. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
61 | 60 | Nichola Raihani & Lee de-Wit | Factors Associated With Concern, Behaviour & Policy Support in Response to SARS-CoV-2 | Political partisanship, social distancing, support for policies | https://psyarxiv.com/8jpzc/ | UK, US | political partisanship | Social distancing | policies | SARS-CoV-2 is a novel coronavirus that results in a disease known as COVID-19. Given that no vaccine is currently available, or likely to be available in the near term, slowing the spread of the virus relies on radical behaviour change at a mass scale. Understanding the factors associated with behaviour change and support for different policy measures is therefore critical. Here, we present data collected in two waves in the UK and the USA (March 12th and 24th) exploring (i) subjective concern about the health impacts of COVID-19 for self, for family and for society; (ii) the factors associated with compliance with several preventive behavioural measures; and (iii) support for policy measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Concern about the societal impacts of COVID-19 varied along partisan lines, with political conservatives being relatively less concerned than political liberals about the impacts for society. People who reported being more concerned also reported adopting more preventive behaviours and supported a greater number of policies. Concern for self and family was a stronger predictor than societal concern for behaviour change and policy support, and most strongly predicted the increase in both these measures from March 12th to 24th. Political conservatives in both countries supported fewer policies, an effect that could be partially mediated by the negative effect of political conservatism on societal concern. These findings suggest concern for self and family outweighs concern for society in motivating behaviour change needed to curb the spread of COVID-19, and that concern for society varies along political lines. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
62 | 61 | Matthew Motta, Dominik Stecula, & Christina Farhart | How Right-Leaning Media Coverage of COVID-19 Facilitated the Spread of Misinformation in the Early Stages of the Pandemic | Misinformation, political partisanship | https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/a8r3p/ | US | Operationalization is a little fishy; lumped in with the "believes misinformation" category is "there will be a vaccine in a few months"—not exactly a lie spread by malevolent actors as far as I know but potentially a simple mistake or indicator of optimism. Search terms for the MIT MediaLab database are a little imprecise for my taste, too. | political partisanship | misinformation | In recent weeks, several academic and journalistic outlets have documented widespread misinformation about the origins and potential treatment for COVID-19. This misinformation could have important public health consequences if misinformed people are less likely to heed the advice of public health experts. While some have anecdotally tied the prevalence of misinformation to misleading or inaccurate media coverage of the pandemic in its early stages, few have rigorously tested this claim empirically. In this paper, we report the results of an automated content analysis showing that right-leaning news outlets (e.g., Fox News, Breitbart) were more than 2.5 times more likely than mainstream outlets to discuss COVID-19 misinformation during the early stages of the U.S. pandemic response. In a nationally representative survey (N = 8,914) conducted from 3/10-3/16, we then show that people who consumed more right-leaning news during this timeframe were more than twice as likely to endorse COVID-related misinformation. Alarmingly, survey data further suggest that misinformation endorsement has negative public health consequences, as misinformed people are more likely to believe that the CDC is exaggerating COVID-related health risks. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
63 | 62 | Francesc Amat, Andreu Arenas, Albert Falcó-Gimeno, & Jordi Muñoz | Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Spain | Nationalism | https://osf.io/dkusw/ | Spain | political partisanship | The COVID-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world governments are making use of exceptional powers to enforce lockdowns, often sacrificing civil liberties and profoundly altering the pre-existing power balance, which nurtures fears of an authoritarian turn. Relief packages to mitigate the economic consequences of the lockdowns are being discussed, and there is little doubt that the forthcoming recession will have important distributive consequences. In this paper we study citizens' responses to these democratic dilemmas. We present results from a set of survey experiments run in Spain from March 20 to March 28, together with longitudinal evidence from a panel survey fielded right before and after the virus outbreak. Our findings reveal a strong preference for a national as opposed to a European/international response. The national bias is much stronger for the COVID-19 crisis than for other global problems, such as climate change or international terrorism. We also find widespread demand for strong leadership, willingness to give up individual freedom, and a sharp increase in support for technocratic governance. As such, we document the initial switch in mass public preferences towards technocratic and authoritarian government caused by the pandemic. We discuss to what extent this crisis may contribute to a shift towards a new, self-enforcing political equilibrium. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
64 | 63 | Amanda Graham, Francis T. Cullen, Justin Pickett, Cheryl Jonson, Murat Haner, & Melissa M. Sloan | Faith in Trump, Moral Foundations, and Social Distancing Defiance During the Coronavirus Pandemic | Trump (partisan response), social distancing, moral foundations | Faith in Trump predicts self-reported refusal to social distance | MTurkers | https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/fudzq/ | US | political partisanship | Purpose: Over the past several months, the coronavirus has infected nearly 2 million Americans and killed more than 100,000. Governors have issued stay-at-home orders, and prosecutors have filed criminal charges against individuals for defying those orders. And yet, many Americans have still refused to keep their distance from their fellow citizens, even if they had symptoms of infection. This study explores the underlying causes for those who intend to defy these norms. Methods: Using national-level data from a March 2020 survey of 989 Americans, we explore intentions to defy social distancing norms by testing an interactionist theory of foundation-based moral behavior in combination with faith in President Trump. The analysis controls for a range of variables, including measures of low self-control and deterrence. Results: Low self-control is the strongest predictor of defiance intentions. Consistent with interactionist theory, defiance intentions are significantly higher for those holding a specific faith in Trump and those endorsing binding foundation. Furthermore, the interaction of these two variables is significant and in the predicted direction. The results hold for two different measures of faith in Trump. Conclusions: Even with a strong effect for low self-control, faith in President Trump is a strong predictor of refusal to social distance, and its effect is largest among individuals high in binding foundations. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
65 | 64 | Daniel Rosenfeld | Political Ideology and the Outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States | Partisan response | https://psyarxiv.com/jrpfd/ | US | political partisanship | At the state level within the United States, did political ideology predict the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19)? Throughout March 2020, the United States became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, recording the most cases of any country worldwide. The current research found that, at the state level within the United States, more conservative political ideology predicted delayed implementation of stay-at-home orders and more rapid spread of COVID-19. Effects were significant across two distinct operationalizations of political ideology and held over and above relevant covariates, suggesting a potentially unique role of political ideology in the United States’ COVID-19 outbreak. Considering political ideological factors may offer valuable insights into epidemiological processes surrounding COVID-19. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
66 | 65 | Hank Rothgerber, Thomas Wilson, Davis Whaley, Daniel Rosenfeld, Michael Humphrey, Allison Moore, & Allison Bihl | Politicizing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ideological Differences in Adherence to Social Distancing | Partisan response | https://psyarxiv.com/k23cv/ | US | political partisanship | Data from two MTurk studies with U.S. respondents (total N =1,153) revealed an ideological divide in adherence to social distancing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, political conservatism inversely predicted compliance with behaviors aimed at preventing the spread of the COVID-19. Differences in reported social distancing were mediated by divergent perceptions of the health risk posed by COVID-19 (Studies 1 and 2), which were explained by differences in self-reported knowledge of COVID-19 (Study 1) and perceived media accuracy in covering the pandemic (Studies 1 and 2). The politicization of COVID-19 may have prompted conservatives to discount mainstream media reports of the severity of the virus, leading them to downplay its health risks and consequently adherence less to social distancing protocols. These effects hold when controlling for key demographic characteristics as well as psychological variables, including belief in science and COVID-19-related anxiety. Thus, political ideology may uniquely explain COVID-19 behavior. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
67 | 66 | Marcus Painter & Tian Qiu | Political Beliefs affect Compliance with COVID-19 Social Distancing Orders | Partisan response | Used debit card transaction data | https://ssrn.com/abstract=3569098 | US | political partisanship | Social distancing is vital to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. We use geolocation data to document that political beliefs present a significant limitation to the effectiveness of state-level social distancing orders. Residents in Republican counties are less likely to completely stay at home after a state order has been implemented relative to those in Democratic counties. Debit card transaction data shows that Democrats are more likely to switch to e-commerce spending after state orders are implemented. We also find that Democrats are less likely to respond to a state-level order when it is issued by a Republican governor relative to one issued by a Democratic governor. These results are robust to controlling for other factors including time, geography, local COVID-19 cases and deaths, county characteristics, and other social distancing orders. We conclude that bipartisan support is essential to maximize the effectiveness of social distancing orders. | 1 | Debit card transaction data | |||||||||||||||||||||
68 | 67 | Hunt Allcott, Levi Boxell, Jacob Conway, Matthew Gentzkow, Michael Thaler, & David Yang | Polarization and Public Health: Partisan Differences in Social Distancing during the Coronavirus Pandemic | Partisan response | Take a wild guess | http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/social_distancing.pdf | US | political partisanship | We study partisan differences in Americans’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Political leaders and media outlets on the right and left have sent divergent messages about the severity of the crisis, which could impact the extent to which Republicans and Democrats engage in social distancing and other efforts to reduce disease transmission. We develop a simple model of a pandemic response with heterogeneous agents that clarifies the causes and consequences of heterogeneous responses. We use location data from a large sample of smartphones to show that areas with more Republicans engage in less social distancing, controlling for other fac- tors including public policies, population density, and local COVID cases and deaths. We then present new survey evidence of significant gaps at the individual level between Republi- cans and Democrats in self-reported social distancing, beliefs about personal COVID risk, and beliefs about the future severity of the pandemic. | 1 | Movement data | |||||||||||||||||||||
69 | 68 | Guy Grossman, Soojong Kim, Jonah Rexer, Harsha Thirummurthy | Political Partisanship Influences Behavioral Responses to Governors’ Recommendations for COVID-19 Prevention in the United States | Partisan response, beliefs about policies (stay-at-home directives) | Factors include political leaning of county, political leaning of governor | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3578695 | US | Published at https://www.pnas.org/content/117/39/24144.short | political partisanship | policies | Voluntary physical distancing is essential for preventing the spread of COVID-19. Political partisanship may influence individuals’ responsiveness to recommendations from political leaders. Daily mobility during March 2020 was measured using location information from a sample of mobile phones in 3,100 US counties across 49 states. Governors’ Twitter communications were used to determine the timing of messaging about COVID-19 prevention. Regression analyses examined how political preferences influenced the association between governors’ COVID-19 communications and residents’ mobility patterns. Governors’ recommendations for residents to stay at home preceded stay-at-home orders, and led to a significant reduction in mobility that was comparable to the effect of the orders themselves. Effects were larger in Democratic than Republican-leaning counties, a pattern more pronounced under Republican governors. Democratic-leaning counties also responded more to recommendations from Republican than Democratic governors. Political partisanship influences citizens’ decisions to voluntarily engage in physical distancing in response to communications by their governor. | 1 | Movement data | |||||||||||||||||||
70 | 69 | Nicolás Ajzenman, Tiago Cavalcanti, Daniel Da Mata | More Than Words: Leaders’ Speech and Risky Behavior during a Pandemic | Partisan responses | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3582908 | Brazil | political partisanship | How do political leader’s words and actions affect people’s behavior? We address this question in the context of Brazil by combining electoral data and geo-localized mobile phone data for more than 60 million devices throughout the entire country. We find that after Brazil’s president publicly and emphatically dismisses the risks associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic and advises against isolation, social distancing measures of citizens in pro-government localities reduce relative to those places in which his support is weaker, while pre-event effects are insignificant. The impact is large and robust to different empirical model specifications. We also find suggestive evidence that this impact is driven by localities with relatively higher levels of media penetration. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
71 | 70 | Jessica Farias & Ronaldo Pilati | Violating social distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Psychological factors to improve compliance | Political partisanship, social distancing | https://psyarxiv.com/apg9e/ | Brazil | political partisanship | Social distancing | Social distancing is one of the most effective measures to prevent coronavirus from rapidly spreading. Our analysis investigates the role of some variables (political partisanship, income, professional status, social norms, and uncertainty avoidance) in intentions of not complying with social distancing measures, which can lead to higher infection rates and to compromising the capacity of health systems worldwide. We applied an online questionnaire to 2,056 Brazilian participants. Our findings indicate that individuals that support right-wing parties, have lower wages, are currently unemployed, and have a higher uncertainty avoidance tendency are more prone to violating social distancing measures. Social norms also play a significant role on the intentions but only when using ingroup members (family and friends) as referents. On the basis of our findings, we discuss the need for support from relevant political figures to social distancing policies. We also indicate that providing psychological support and cash transfer programs may increase compliance with physical distancing. Plus, our results indicate that initiatives to persuade individuals to stay at home would be more effective if they focus on ingroup members. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
72 | 71 | Maciej Karwowski, Marta Kowal, Agata Groyecka, Michal Bialek, Izabela Lebuda, Agnieszka Sorokowska, & Piotr Sorokowski | When in Danger, Turn Right: Covid-19 Threat Promotes Social Conservatism and Right-Wing Presidential Candidates | Leaning right & pathogen threat | https://psyarxiv.com/pjfhs | US, Poland | political partisanship | pathogen threat | The recent coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic forms an enormous challenge for the world's economy, governments, and societies. Drawing upon the Parasite Model of Democratization (Thornhill, R., Fincher, C. L., & Aran, D. (2009), parasites, democratization, and the liberalization of values across contemporary countries, Biological Reviews, 84(1), 113-131) across two large, preregistered experiments conducted in the USA and Poland (total N = 1,237), we examined the psychological and political consequences of this unprecedented pandemic. By manipulating saliency of COVID-19, we demonstrate that activating thinking about coronavirus elevates Americans' and Poles' anxiety and indirectly promotes their social conservatism as well as support for more conservative presidential candidates. The pattern obtained was consistent in both countries and it implies that the pandemic may result in a shift in political views. Both theoretical and practical consequences of the findings are discussed. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
73 | 72 | Mark Pickup, Dominik Stecula, & Clifton van der Linden | Novel coronavirus, old partisanship: COVID-19 attitudes and behaviors in the United States and Canada | Partisan response | Large differences in assessments of govt response, small differeces in SELF-REPORTED behaviors | https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/5gy3d/ | US, Canada | political partisanship | We utilize nationally representative surveys from the United States and Canada to examine the partisan divide in COVID-19 attitudes and behaviours in both countries. The first cases of COVID-19 in both the US and Canada occurred around the same time, but government responses were starkly different. We explore politically salient assessments of governmental performance in both countries, as well as general concern regarding COVID-19 and declarations of changes to daily routines undertaken in response to the pandemic. We find strong partisan differences in evaluations of the government’s response to COVID-19 and confidence in its ability to handle the crisis. We also find partisan differences in concern and behavioural responses to the pandemic in both countries. However, the behavioural differences are small, suggesting that while overtly political assessments are strongly partisan this polarization is dampened down when it comes to actual behavioural responses to the pandemic. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
74 | 73 | G. Cristina Mora & Eric Schickler | Release #2020-05: Californians’ Views Towards President Trump Shape COVID-19 Attitudes | Partisan response (Trump support as IV) | Take a wild guess; of particular note, though, was that the researchers measured trust in CDC and WHO | https://escholarship.org/content/qt4cf479gp/qt4cf479gp.pdf | California | political partisanship | n/a | |||||||||||||||||||||||
75 | 74 | Gregg Murray, Susan Murray | Following Doctors’ Advice: Explaining the Issuance of Stay-at-Home Orders Related to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) by U.S. Governors | Political partisanship, economic factors | Timing of US governors' stay-at-home orders were predicted by political party and state economic conditions | https://osf.io/92ay6 | US | political partisanship | Public health experts widely and strongly advocate for aggressive social distancing to slow the spread of serious infectious diseases. While government mandates to social distance protect public health, they can also impose substantial social and economic costs on those subject to them. As a result, government leaders may be reluctant to issue such mandates. The objective of this study is to identify political, social, economic, and scientific factors that influence governors of U.S. states to issue stay-at-home orders (SAHOs) or not to slow the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It uses event history analysis to investigate the issuance of COVID-19-related gubernatorial SAHOs in the 50 U.S. states from March 1, 2020, the day after the first reported COVID-19-related death in the U.S., to April 10, 2020, several days after the last SAHO was issued. During this 41-day period, 42 of the 50 governors issued such orders affecting more than 90 percent of the country’s residents. The results indicate that scientific factors alone did not inform governors’ decisions. While public health factors related to the spread of the disease informed these decisions, political factors related to the partisanship of the governor and economic factors related to the health of the economy also informed them. The results also provide mixed support for scientific factors related to state healthcare capacity and external factors related to geographic diffusion. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
76 | 75 | Todd Hartman, Thomas Stocks, Ryan McKay, Jilly Gibson Miller, Liat Levita, Anton Martinez, Liam Mason, Orla McBride, Jamie Murphy, Mark Shevlin, Kate Bennett, & Richard P. Bentall | The Authoritarian Dynamic During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects on Nationalism and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment | Authoritarianism | https://psyarxiv.com/4tcv5/ | UK | political partisanship | pathogen threat | Research has demonstrated that situational factors such as perceived threats to the social order activate latent authoritarianism. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to test whether existential threat stemming from an indiscriminate virus moderates the relationship between authoritarianism and political attitudes toward the nation and outgroups. Using data from a large, nationally representative sample of adults in the UK (N = 2,025) collected during the first week of strict lockdown measures (23-28 March 2020), we find that the associations between right-wing authoritarianism and 1) nationalism and 2) anti-immigrant attitudes are conditional on levels of perceived threat. As anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic increases, so too does the effect of right-wing authoritarianism on those political outcomes. Thus, it appears that grave threats to humanity from the COVID-19 pandemic activate authoritarians in society, which in turn, shifts opinion toward nationalistic and anti-immigrant sentiments. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
77 | 76 | Richard A. Benton, J. Adam Cobb, & Timothy Werner | Firm Partisan Political Positioning and Perceptions of COVID-19-Related Risk | Partisan response among businesses | Positive association between an S&P500 firm's contributions to Democrats and perceived COVID-19 risk | Analysis of conference calls, campaign contributions | https://osf.io/tazux/ | political partisanship | risk perception | COVID-19 is the most salient issue in the world presently, and for current executives, it is likely the greatest and gravest challenge they will ever face. Interestingly, upon entering the U.S. context, the disease was immediately subject to the process of affective polarization, with clear partisan splits forming around perceptions of its risks that did not relate to science or ideology. We ask whether the process of affective polarization spilled over into and affected firms’ perceptions of the disease’s risk by examining whether firms’ risk perceptions covary with their partisan political positioning. Analyzing conference call and campaign contribution data for the S&P 500, we find a positive association between a firm’s contributions to Democratic partisans and its recognition of perceived COVID-19 risks. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
78 | 77 | Philip Milroth | Effects of Covid-19 on Measured Risk Preferences | How risk preferences affect perceptions of pandemic | [Ongoing] | https://osf.io/cexyu | U.S., Sweden | risk perception | More and more research points to the notion that there is something akin to a general factor of risk preference (Frey et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2019), but that there can also be domain-specific preferences (Nicholson et al., 2002; Millroth et al., 2020). It is, however, unclear to what extent these measured preferences relate to behavior outside of the laboratory, and to what extent changes in the environment outside of the laboratory can contribute to changes in the measured behavior: - previous research on stock-market crashes and natural disasters have yielded mixed results (for a review, see Hanaoka et al., 2018). The current covid-19 pandemic puts the notions of risk and uncertainty into the absolute center of people's lives, making the situation suitable for making inquiries into these issues. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
79 | 78 | Benjamin Kuper-Smith, Lisa Doppelhofer, Yulia Oganian, Gabriela Rosenblau, Christoph Korn | Optimistic beliefs about the personal impact of COVID-19 | Personal risk beliefs | People underestimate the likelihood of themselves getting infected relative to someone like them | Survey (using Prolific) | https://psyarxiv.com/epcyb/ | US, UK, Germany | risk perception | Slowing the spread of COVID-19 requires people to actively change their lives and follow best practices for social distancing and hygiene. On 16.03.2020, we tested individuals’ beliefs about infection probabilities and abilities to practice social distancing in UK, USA and Germany. Given the rapidly evolving situation, we report here initial analyses in a preliminary brief manuscript. We found that individuals show an optimism bias: they estimate the probability of getting infected with the virus, and of infecting others if infected themselves as lower for themselves than for someone similar to them. We link this optimism to the estimated frequency of direct social contacts as well as to the necessity and ease of reducing these. Our ongoing studies will assess how these biases change over the course of the COVID-19 outbreak, and how adaptive it is. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
80 | 79 | Lars Gerhold | COVID-19: Risk perception and Coping strategies. | Risk perception and coping strategies | Survey | https://psyarxiv.com/xmpk4/ | Germany | risk perception | This paper presents preliminary results of a representative survey of the German population focusing on perceptions of risk and ways of coping with COVID-19. Results show that older people estimate the risk of COVID-19 as being less than younger people. Women are more concerned about COVID-19 than men. People especially worry about being infected in places with high public traffic such as public transport and shops or restaurants. Coping strategies are highly problem-focused and most respondents listen to experts’ advice and try to behave calmly and appropriately. People accept that measures to tackle COVID-19 will take time to be effective. Bulk buying and storing of food is mainly justified by a combination of convenience and a perceived need to be prepared for potential quarantine. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
81 | 80 | Christoph Niepel, Dirk Kranz, Francesca Borgonovi, Samuel Greiff | Risk perception | People underestimate fatality risk of COVID-19 | Survey on Prolific | https://psyarxiv.com/w52e9/ | US | Published at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjhp.12438?casa_token=FtVquFZdffEAAAAA:UdKmRHJZUueZi6kEpdgtDSkYAc-phmaiCN-sXEn5kEszggHmlbCRJMBo0rWKi9k7Gr3FtDg_qLh9F-Nv | risk perception | |||||||||||||||||||||||
82 | 81 | Luca Simione, Camilla Gnagnarella | Differences between health workers and general population in risk perception, behaviors, and psychological distress related to COVID-19 spread in Italy. | Risk perception, behavior, psychological distress in health workers vs. general population | https://psyarxiv.com/84d2c/ | Italy | risk perception | In this study, we investigated the perception of risk and the worries about COVID-19 infection in both healthcare workers and general population in Italy. We studied the difference in risk perception in these two groups, and how this related to demographic variables and psychological factors such as stress, anxiety, and death anxiety. To this aim, we administered an online questionnaire about COVID-19 together with other questionnaires assessing the psychological condition of participants. First, we found that the exposition to infection risk, due to living area or job, increased the perceived stress and anxiety (i.e. medical staff in North Italy was more stressed and anxious respect to both medical- and non-medical participants from Center and South Italy). Then, we conducted hierarchical logistic regression models on our data to assess the response odds ratio relatively to each predictor on each dependent variable. We found that health workers reported higher risk perception, level of worry, and knowledge as related to COVID-19 infection compared to general population. Also psychological state, gender, and living area were important predictors of these factors. Instead, judgments about behaviors and containment rules were more linked to demographics, such as gender and alcohol consumption. We discussed these results in the light of risk factors for psychological distress and possible interventions to meet the psychological needs of healthcare workers. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
83 | 82 | Christina J Atchison, Leigh Bowman, Charlotte Vrinten, Rozlyn Redd, Philippa Pristera, Jeffrey W Eaton, Helen Ward | Perceptions and behavioural responses of the general public during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional survey of UK Adults | Risk perception in UK | https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.01.20050039v1 | UK | risk perception | Objective: To examine risk perceptions and behavioural responses of the UK adult population during the early phase of the COVID-19 epidemic in the UK. Design: A cross-sectional survey Setting: Conducted with a nationally representative sample of UK adults within 48 hours of the UK Government advising the public to stop non-essential contact with others and all unnecessary travel. Participants: 2,108 adults living in the UK aged 18 years and over. Data were collected between March 17 and 18 2020. Main outcome measures: Descriptive statistics for all survey questions, including the number of respondents and the weighted percentages. Logistic regression was used to identify sociodemographic variation in: (1) adoption of social-distancing measures, (2) ability to work from home, and (3) willingness and (4) ability to self-isolate. Results Overall, 1,992 (94.2%) respondents reported taking at least one preventive measure: 85.8% washed their hands with soap more frequently; 56.5% avoided crowded areas and 54.5% avoided social events. Adoption of social-distancing measures was higher in those aged over 70 compared to younger adults aged 18 to 34 years (aOR:1.9; 95% CI:1.1 to 3.4). Those with the lowest household income were six times less likely to be able to work from home (aOR:0.16; 95% CI:0.09 to 0.26) and three times less likely to be able to self-isolate (aOR:0.31; 95% CI:0.16 to 0.58). Ability to self-isolate was also lower in black and minority ethnic groups (aOR:0.47; 95% CI:0.27 to 0.82). Willingness to self-isolate was high across all respondents. Conclusions The ability to adopt and comply with certain NPIs is lower in the most economically disadvantaged in society. Governments must implement appropriate social and economic policies to mitigate this. By incorporating these differences in NPIs among socio-economic subpopulations into mathematical models of COVID-19 transmission dynamics, our modelling of epidemic outcomes and response to COVID-19 can be improved. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
84 | 83 | Toan Luu Duc Huynh | The COVID-19 risk perception: A survey on socioeconomics and media attention | Risk perception in Vietnam | http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2020/Volume40/EB-20-V40-I1-P64.pdf | Vietnam | risk perception | This brief communication examines the role of socioeconomic factors and use of social media on the risk perception about COVID-19 in Vietnam, which shares a common border with China. Moreover, Vietnam was the first country to succeed in containment of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003. From a sample of 391 Vietnamese respondents aged from 15 to 47 years, the present study found that geographical regions and behaviors in using social media have a positive impact on the risk perception of COVID-19 epidemic in Vietnam. It also adds to the significance of understanding the risk perception among people to communicate the public health response to COVID-19 to curb the spread of this deadly virus. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
85 | 84 | Jennifer Trueblood, Abigail Sussman, Daniel O'Leary, & William Holmes | A Tale of Two Crises: Financial Fragility and Beliefs about the Spread of COVID-19 | Risk perception | "...financial fragility influences people's beliefs about both their personal risk of infection and the national spread of the virus" more than local disease severity and as much as partisanship | https://psyarxiv.com/xfrz3/ | US | risk perception | Experts estimate that there could be millions of cases of COVID-19 in the US, leading to potentially 100,000 or more deaths. Beliefs about the severity of the spread of COVID-19 and one's own likelihood of being infected have implications for individual behavior and consequently for the spread of the virus. The current research explores key factors that enter into these beliefs. Using nationally representative surveys with more than 3,800 participants, we find that key factors epidemiological models typically use in their predictions (e.g., concentration of cases in a given area) do not meaningfully enter into individuals' beliefs. We draw on the reality that we currently face not only a health crisis, but a financial crisis as well to identify financial fragility as a key factor influencing beliefs. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
86 | 85 | Sarah Dryhurst, Claudia R. Schneider, John Kerr, Alexandra L. J. Freeman, Gabriel Recchia, Anne Marthe van der Bles, David Spiegelhalter, Sander van der Linden | Risk perceptions of COVID-19 around the world | Risk perception | https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/304880 | Multinational (Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Sweden, UK, US) | risk perception | trust | The World Health Organization has declared the rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world a global public health emergency. It is well-known that the spread of the disease is influenced by people’s willingness to adopt preventative public health behaviors, which are often associated with public risk perception. In this study, we present the first assessment of public risk perception of COVID-19 around the world using national samples (total N = 6,991) in ten countries across Europe, America, and Asia. We find that although levels of concern are relatively high, they are highest in the UK and lowest in South Korea. Across countries, personal experience with the virus, individualistic and prosocial values, hearing about the risk from friends and family, trust in government, science, and medical professionals, and personal and collective efficacy were all significant predictors of risk perception. Although there was substantial variability across cultures, individualistic worldviews, personal experience, prosocial values, and social amplification through friends and family in particular were found to be significant determinants in greater than half of the countries examined. Risk perception correlated with reported adoption of preventative health behaviors in all ten countries. Implications for effective risk communication are discussed. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
87 | 86 | Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Ricky Cohen, Rana Hijazi, & Nour Abed Elhadi Shahbari | Analysis of Public Perception of the Israeli Government’s Early Emergency Instructions Regarding COVID-19: Online Survey Study | Risk perception, source credibility, compliance with mitigation measures | https://www.jmir.org/2020/5/e19370/ | Israel | risk perception | source credibility | NPIs | Background: On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to be a pandemic. This posed challenges to many countries, prominent among which is communication with the public to gain their cooperation. Israel faces different challenges from other countries in its management of the COVID-19 crisis because it is in the midst of a deep constitutional crisis. Objective: The objective of this paper was to examine the response of the Israeli public to the government’s emergency instructions regarding the pandemic in terms of correlations between overall risk perception and crisis management; overall risk perception and economic threat perception; crisis management and compliance with behavioral guidelines; and crisis management and economic threat perception. We also made comparisons between crisis management and spokesperson credibility and between crisis management and the credibility of information sources. Methods: The sample was established using an online survey that enabled rapid and effective distribution of an online questionnaire during the COVID-19 crisis. The self-selection online survey method of nonprobability sampling was used to recruit participants (N=1056) through social network posts asking the general public (aged ≥18 years) to answer the survey. Results: Participants aged ≥65 years perceived higher personal risk compared to those aged 18-30 years (mean difference 0.33, 95% CI 0.04-0.61) and those aged 46-64 years (mean difference 0.38, 95% CI 0.12-0.64). Significant correlations were found between overall risk perception and attitudes toward crisis management (r=0.19, P<.001), overall risk perception and economic threat perception (r=0.22, P<.001), attitudes toward crisis management and compliance with behavioral guidelines (r=0.15, P<.001), and attitudes toward crisis management and economic threat perception (r=–0.15, P<.001). Participants who perceived that the prime minister was the most credible spokesperson evaluated the crisis management significantly higher than all other groups. The crisis management was evaluated significantly lower by participants who stated that infectious disease specialists were the most credible spokespersons. Participants for whom the Ministry of Health website was the most credible source of information evaluated the crisis management higher than all other groups. Participants for whom scientific articles were the most credible source of information evaluated the crisis management lower than those who perceived that the WHO/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention websites or Ministry of Health/hospital websites and health care workers were the most credible. Conclusions: The higher the public trust and evaluation of crisis management, the greater the compliance of the public with guidelines. It was also found that crisis management and information cannot be approached in the same way for the overall public. Furthermore, unlike other epidemics, the COVID-19 crisis has widespread economic and social consequences; therefore, it is impossible to focus only on health risks without communicating economic and social risks as well. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
88 | 87 | Samantha K. Brooks, Rebecca K. Webster, Louise E. Smith, Lisa Woodland, Simon Wessely, Neil Greenberg, Gideon James Rubin | The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence | Psychological consequences of quarantine | Quarantine can cause PTSD, confusion, anger; see paper for details about exacerbating factors and long-term effects | Literature review | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620304608 | Reviews 24 studies conducted in Taiwan, Canada, Australia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Libera, US, Sweden | self-isolation | The December, 2019 coronavirus disease outbreak has seen many countries ask people who have potentially come into contact with the infection to isolate themselves at home or in a dedicated quarantine facility. Decisions on how to apply quarantine should be based on the best available evidence. We did a Review of the psychological impact of quarantine using three electronic databases. Of 3166 papers found, 24 are included in this Review. Most reviewed studies reported negative psychological effects including post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion, and anger. Stressors included longer quarantine duration, infection fears, frustration, boredom, inadequate supplies, inadequate information, financial loss, and stigma. Some researchers have suggested long-lasting effects. In situations where quarantine is deemed necessary, officials should quarantine individuals for no longer than required, provide clear rationale for quarantine and information about protocols, and ensure sufficient supplies are provided. Appeals to altruism by reminding the public about the benefits of quarantine to wider society can be favourable. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
89 | 88 | Rebecca Webster, Samantha Brooks, Louise Smith, Lisa Woodland, Simon Wessely, James Rubin | How to improve adherence with quarantine: Rapid review of the evidence. | Adherence to quarantine | Review | https://osf.io/c5pz8/ | Reviews 14 studies conducted in Australia, Sierra Leone, Canada, Senegal, Liberia, Taiwan, Germany, US | self-isolation | Objectives: The January 2020 outbreak of coronavirus has once again thrown the vexed issue of quarantine into the spotlight, with many countries asking their citizens to ‘self-isolate’ if they have potentially come into contact with the infection. However, adhering to quarantine is difficult. Decisions on how to apply quarantine should be based on the best available evidence to increase the likelihood of people adhering to protocols. We conducted a rapid review to identify factors associated with adherence to quarantine during infectious disease outbreaks. Study design Rapid evidence review. Methods: We searched Medline, PsycINFO and Web of Science for published literature on the reasons for and factors associated with adherence to quarantine during an infectious disease outbreak. Results: We found 3163 papers and included 14 in the review. Adherence to quarantine ranged from as little as 0 up to 92.8%. The main factors which influenced or were associated with adherence decisions were the knowledge people had about the disease and quarantine procedure, social norms, perceived benefits of quarantine and perceived risk of the disease, as well as practical issues such as running out of supplies or the financial consequences of being out of work. Conclusions: People vary in their adherence to quarantine during infectious disease outbreaks. To improve this, public health officials should provide a timely, clear rationale for quarantine and information about protocols; emphasise social norms to encourage this altruistic behaviour; increase the perceived benefit that engaging in quarantine will have on public health; and ensure that sufficient supplies of food, medication and other essentials are provided. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
90 | 89 | Zohn Rosen, Sarah L. Weinberger-Litman, Cheskie Rosenzweig, David H. Rosmarin, Peter Muennig, Ellie R Carmody, Sukumar T. Rao, & Leib Litman | Anxiety and distress among the first community quarantined in the U.S due to COVID-19: Psychological implications for the unfolding crisis | Anxiety due to quarantine | https://psyarxiv.com/7eq8c/ | US (New York City) | self-isolation | Purpose: This study assesses distress/anxiety and predictors of distress/anxiety associated with quarantine due to COVID-19 exposure among the first quarantined community in the US, and to identify potential areas of intervention. Design: An anonymous survey was distributed via community organization distribution lists to approximately 1250 constituents under a quarantine directive. Setting: Members of the first community in the NYC area under quarantine orders due to the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Intervention: We sought to uncover the most salient predictors of distress/anxiety in order to recommend specific areas for effective intervention to reduce distress Measures: We measured distress by using the Subjective Units of Distress Scale and anxiety with the Beck Anxiety Inventory. A variety of psychosocial predictors relevant to the current crisis were explored. Results: 303 individuals responded within 48 hours of survey distribution. Mean levels of distress in the sample were heightened and sustained, with 69% reporting moderate to severe distress. Modifiable behavioral factors, specifically with regard to media exposure and sleep quality, predicted the largest percentage of variance in the sample (41.9%, F (3, 264) = 40.7, R = 0.65, p < .001). Conclusion: Distress levels were markedly elevated among those in quarantine. The highest percentage of distress/anxiety variance was accounted for by modifiable factors amenable to behavioral and psychological interventions, including promoting healthy sleep and curtailing media use. Access to professional mental health care as well as behavioral interventions should be prioritized. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
91 | 90 | Netta Weinstein & Thuy-vy Nguyen | Motivation and Preference in Isolation: A test of their different influences on responses to self-isolation during the COVID-19 outbreak | Self-isolation | Negative correlation between preference for solitude and loneliness/anxiety/depression was barely detectable | https://psyarxiv.com/pbgq7/ | US, UK | Look at this closely; at first glance it seems like they did a really nice job | self-isolation | This multi-wave study examined the extent that both preference and motivation for time alone shapes ill-being during self-isolation. Individuals in the US and UK are self-isolating in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Different motivations may drive their self-isolation: some might see value in it (understood as the identified form of autonomous motivation), while others might feel forced into it by authorities or close others (family, friends, neighbourhoods, doctors; the external form of controlled motivation). People who typically prefer company will find themselves spending more time alone, and may experience differential ill-being uniformly, or as a function of their identified or external motivations for self-isolation. Self-isolation therefore offers a unique opportunity to distinguish two constructs coming from disparate literatures. This project examined preference and motivation (identified and external) for solitude, and tested their independent and interacting contributions to ill-being (loneliness, depression, and anxiety during time spent alone) across two weeks. Confirmatory hypotheses regarding preference and motivation were not supported by the data. A statistically significant effect of controlled motivation on change in ill-being was observed one week later, and preference predicted ill-being across two weeks. However, effect sizes for both were below our minimum threshold of interest. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
92 | 91 | Stefan Pfattheicher, Laila Nockur, Robert Böhm, Claudia Sassenrath, & Michael Bang Petersen | The emotional path to action: Empathy promotes physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic | Social distancing | Empathy motivates adherence to social distancing; inducing empathy increases intention to adhere | https://psyarxiv.com/y2cg5/ | US, UK, Germany | Social distancing | The COVID-19 pandemic presents a major challenge to societies all over the globe. To curb the spread of the disease, one measure implemented in many countries is minimizing close contact between people (“physical distancing”). Engaging in physical distancing is a prosocial act in the sense that it helps protecting other individuals, especially those most vulnerable to the virus. Building on this notion, we tested the idea that physical distancing can be the result of a genuine prosocial motivation—empathy for those most vulnerable to the virus. In three pre-registered studies that include samples from the US, the UK, and Germany (total N = 2,192) collected at the beginning of the outbreak, we show that (i) empathy is indeed a basic motivation for physical distancing, and (ii) inducing empathy for those most vulnerable to the virus promotes the motivation to adhere to physical distancing. In sum, the present research provides a better understanding of the basic motivation underlying the willingness to follow one important measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. We further point to the potential for policymakers to use empathy to promote physical distancing – in this way to increase the chance of saving lives. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
93 | 92 | Marc Oliver Rieger | What Do Young People Think about Social Distancing during the Corona Crisis in Germany? | Beliefs about social distancing in German young people | What Do Young People Think about Social Distancing during the Corona Crisis in Germany? | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561366 | Germany | Social distancing | trust | In a survey among 250 subjects recruited at a German university and predominantly university students, we elicit opinions about social distancing, i.e. the necessity to keep away from other people to slow down the speed of the ongoing SARS-CoV2 epidemics. The good news is that most students are supportive to it. A minority, however, does not completely agree. We find that how many elderly persons subjects knew personally, was the most significant factor for their attitudes towards social distancing. We also found a significant negative impact of believe in conspiracy theories on these attitudes. These theories have a low, but non-negligible number of proponents, even among university students. Moreover, a certain degree of mistrust to media is widespread (around a third of the subjects). To improve positive attitudes to social distancing and thus to improve compliance we recommend therefore to emphasize relations of persons to elderly people more and to continue fighting against fake news and conspiracy theories regarding SARS-CoV2. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
94 | 93 | Michiel Bakker, Alex Berke, Matt Groh, Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, Esteban Moro | Effect of social distancing measures in the New York City metropolitan area | Movement and interpersonal contact behaviors in NYC | Analysis of movement data | http://curveflattening.media.mit.edu/Social_Distancing_New_York_City.pdf | US (New York City metropolitan area) | Social distancing | ● Social distancing policies in the New York City metropolitan area have resulted in empirically verified, dramatic changes in where people spend their time and with how many people they interact. For example, here are three striking differences between the weekends of late February and last weekend (March 20th) that we discovered when analyzing anonymized geolocation data in New York City: ○ Distance travelled everyday dropped by 70 percent from a weekend average of 25 miles in February to 7 miles last weekend. ○ The number of social contacts in places decreased by 93% from 75 to 5. ○ The number of people staying home the whole day has increased from 20% to 60%. ● Supermarkets and grocery stores have become the most common place where social contact takes place. ● The national emergency declaration and school closure announcement on March 14th resulted in a huge surge of visits (up to 60% more) to many places. Most of this surge in activity happened at Grocery, Shopping, Food and Outdoor places. The reduction in distance travelled and daily social contacts became significant only after non-essential business closure measures were introduced on March 22nd. ● After the measures were introduced surges of activity appeared in places like the beaches and the Hamptons. A large fraction of people (5.5%) left the NYC area for other places across the US. For example, 0.37% of people left NYC for Florida, which is important to note because this kind of travel can bring the virus to new places. ● Normally, mobility and social contacts vary significantly by the demographic composition of a neighborhood. The social distancing policies have greatly reduced relative differences between different demographic groups as nearly everyone’s mobility and social contacts has been dramatically reduced. | 1 | Movement data | |||||||||||||||||||||
95 | 94 | Peter D. Lunn, Shane Timmons, Cameron A. Belton, Martina Barjaková, Hannah Julienne & Ciarán Lavin | Motivating social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic: An online experiment | Communication strategies to promote social distancing | Online exp. through Ireland Dept. of Health; | https://psyarxiv.com/x4agb/ | Ireland | Includes actual graphics | Social distancing | messaging | Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic will save lives. We tested communication strategies to promote social distancing via an online experiment (N = 500) commissioned by Ireland’s Department of Health. A control group saw a current informational poster. Two treatment groups saw similar posters with messages that highlighted: (i) the risk of transmission to identifiable persons vulnerable to COVID-19; (ii) the exponential nature of transmission. We then measured judgements of behaviours previously identified by focus groups as “marginal” (meaning that people were not sure whether they were advisable, such meeting others outdoors, or visiting parents). We recorded intention to undertake behaviours and stated acceptability of behaviours. Our hypotheses, that both treatments would increase participants’ caution about marginal behaviours, were preregistered (i.e. lodged with an international organisation for open science before data collection). Results confirmed the hypotheses. The findings suggest that the thought of infecting vulnerable people or large numbers of people can motivate social distancing. This has implications for communications strategies. The study also demonstrates an effective way to identify outcome variables for rapid behavioural research on the COVID-19 response. | |||||||||||||||||||||
96 | 95 | Jillian J. Jordan, Erez Yoeli, and David G. Rand | Don’t get it or don’t spread it? Comparing self-interested versus prosocially framed COVID-19 prevention messaging | Communication strategies to promote social distancing | Modest framing effect on intentions to engage in preventive behaviors (handwashing, stop face touching) | https://psyarxiv.com/yuq7x | US | Pretty weak effect; difference of emphasizing public (threat to your community) vs. personal (threat to you) on prevention intentions was M = 82 vs. M = 79 on a 100-point scale; no reliable effects on social distancing intentions | Social distancing | messaging | The COVID-19 pandemic threatens millions of lives, and an effective response will require individuals to take costly and difficult measures to prevent infection. How should public health messaging frame these measures, which can reasonably be conceptualized as either self-interested actions or cooperative efforts? We measured the influence of three messaging treatments on coronavirus prevention intentions among Americans from Amazon Mechanical Turk. All treatments presented identical COVID-19 information, but emphasized either personal, public, or both personal and public benefits of prevention behaviors. In studies (n = 2176) conducted early in the pandemic (March 14-16, when there were under 2,000 confirmed U.S. cases), we found support for prosocial framing: the Public treatment was more effective than the Personal treatment, and no less effective than the Personal+Public treatment. In studies (n = 3985) conducted later (April 17-30, when there were over 500,000 confirmed U.S. cases), all three treatments were similarly effective. Additionally, across both sets of studies, the perceived public threat of coronavirus predicted prevention intentions more strongly than the perceived personal threat. Together, our results highlight the potential value of prosocial framing. | |||||||||||||||||||||
97 | 96 | Kaori Muto, Isamu Yamamoto, Miwako Nagasu, Mikihito Tanaka, Koji Wada | Japanese citizens' behavioral changes and preparedness against COVID-19: How effective is Japan's approach of self-restraint? | Behavioral change in Japan | https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.31.20048876v1 | Japan | Social distancing | NPIs | trust | The Japanese government instituted countermeasures against COVID-19, a pneumonia caused by the new coronavirus, in January 2020. Seeking “people's behavioral changes,” in which the government called on the public to take precautionary measures or exercise self-restraint, was one of the important strategies. The purpose of this study is to investigate how and from when Japanese citizens have changed their precautionary behavior under these circumstances, where the government has only requested their cooperation. This study uses micro data from a cross-sectional survey conducted on an online platform of an online research company, based on quota sampling that is representative of the Japanese population. By the end of March 2020, we had recruited a total of 11,342 respondents, aged from 20 to 64 years. About 85% reported practising the social distancing recommended by the government. More females than males and more older than younger participants are supportive of practicing social distancing. Frequent handwashing is conducted by 86 percent of all, 92 percent of female and 87.9 percent of over-40 participants. The most important event influencing these precautionary actions was the infection aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which occurred in early February 2020 (23%). Information from the central and local governments, received by 60% of the participants, was deemed trustworthy by 50%. However, the results also showed that about 20% of the participants were reluctant to implement proper prevention measures. The statistical analysis indicated that the typical characteristics of those people were male, younger (under 30 years old), unmarried, from lower-income households, with a drinking or smoking habit and a higher extraversion score. To prevent the spread of infection in Japan, it is imperative to address these individuals and encourage their behavioral changes using various means to reach and influence them. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
98 | 97 | Viren Swami & David Barron | Analytic Thinking, Rejection of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Conspiracy Theories, and Compliance with Mandated Social-Distancing: Direct and Indirect Relationships in a Nationally Representative Sample of Adults in the United Kingdom | Social distancing, analytic thinking, conspiracy theories | https://osf.io/nmx9w | UK | Social distancing | conspiracy theories | Faced with the threat to physical and mental health posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, many nations worldwide have mandated social-distancing measures. However, individual compliance with such measures is likely to be shaped by a range of economic, socio-political, and psychological factors. Here, we proposed and tested a mediation model in which rejection of COVID-19 conspiracy theories mediates the relationship between analytic thinking and compliance with mandated social-distancing measures. A nationally representative sample of the adult population in the United Kingdom (N = 520, age M = 45.85 years) completed a previously-validated measure of analytic thinking, as well as novel measures of rejection of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and compliance with mandated social-distancing requirements that were in place in the United Kingdom in early April 2020. Exploratory factor analyses indicated that both novel measures were unidimensional with adequate internal consistency. Inter-correlations between scores on all three measures were significant and positive. Mediation analysis indicated that analytic thinking and rejection of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, respectively, were significantly and directly associated with compliance, and that the mediated association was also significant. These results may have important implications for practical policy aimed at promoting greater compliance with mandated social-distancing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
99 | 98 | Sean Fischer | Local news availability does not increase pro-social pandemic response | Social distancing, local news | Little evidence for a relationship between local news availability and adherence to social distancing | Google movement data compared with # of newspapers available by county (meh) | https://osf.io/ysruw | US | Social distancing | The response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has been notably partisan. However, recent evidence suggests that people have also been directing more attention to local newspapers during this period. Given that local newspapers promote pro-social civic behavior, such as turning out to vote, it is possible that this increase in attention is helping communities to adopt necessary social distancing behavior. To test this possibility, I combine Google's mobility data from thousands of American counties with counts of the number of local newspapers available in each county, as well as county-level pandemic and demographic features, to model changes in staying at home and traveling for retail and recreation purposes. I find that even though behavior change is correlated with local newspaper availability, the association disappears when controlling for additional pandemic and demographic features. The absence of an effect persists when applying covariate balancing propensity score weighting. There also is no evidence that the time period from which an observation was drawn moderates the effect. This lack of a causal effect of local news availability on pro-social behavior uptake has implications for the potential of local news to undo the politicization and polarization of other national initiatives. | 1 | Movement data | ||||||||||||||||||||
100 | 99 | Rodrigo Diaz & Florian Cova | Moral values and trait pathogen disgust predict compliance with official recommendations regarding COVID-19 pandemic in US samples | Social distancing, epistemic attitudes, pathogen disgust | Intent to comply with social distancing directives is predicted by pathogen disgust and moral orientation to others but not epistemic attitudes | https://psyarxiv.com/5zrqx/ | US | Social distancing | pathogen threat | Emergency situations require individuals to make important changes in their behavior. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, official recommendations to slow the spread of the virus include costly behaviors such as self-quarantining, which individuals might be reluctant to adopt. However, whether or not people adopt those behaviors could make a huge difference in the impact of the pandemic. In this context, it is important to elucidate what psychological traits underlie people’s (lack of) compliance with official recommendations to slow the spread of the virus. In three exploratory studies and one preregistered replication in a representative sample of US participants, we found converging evidence that compliance with official recommendations is not related to epistemic attitudes such as beliefs in conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, fear, or psychological reactance. Instead, participants’ behavioral intentions were predicted by their (1) disgust towards pathogens, and (2) moral values regarding the importance of caring about others. |