posted on 2021-03-26, 09:59authored byStefano Pagliaro, Simona Sacchi, Maria Giuseppina Pacilli, Marco Brambilla, Francesca Lionetti, Karim Bettache, Mauro Bianchi, Marco Biella, Virginie Bonnot, Mihaela Boza, Fabrizio Butera, Suzan Ceylan-Batur, Kristy Chong, Tatiana Chopova, Charlie R. Crimston, Belen Alvarez, Isabel Cuadrado, Naomi Ellemers, Magdalena Formanowicz, Verena Graupmann, Theofilos Gkinopoulos, Evelyn Hye Kyung Jeong, Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti, Jolanda Jetten, Kabir Muhib Bin, Yanhui Mao, Christine McCoy, Farah Mehnaz, Anca Minescu, David Sirlopu, Andrej Simić, Giovanni Travaglino, Ayse K. Uskul, Cinzia Zanetti, Anna Zinn, Elena Zubieta
The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has
posed a severe threat to individuals’ well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the
released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the mean time, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled.
Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one’s own health.
Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large.
This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing
to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals’ willingness to engage in
prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals’ behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak.
History
Publication
PLoS ONE;0248334
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Note
peer-reviewed
Other Funding information
European Association of Social Psychology, Pomilio Blumm Communication Agency