Intuitive Judgments of “Overreaction” and Their Relationship to Compliance with Public Health Measures

How does the general public determine if a policy intervention is appropriate or an overreaction, and how do such judgments influence compliance? In four studies, we found that prospective judgments of overreaction are influenced by how likely a bad event is to occur, and retrospective judgments are influenced by whether the intervention is successful. In Studies 1–3, we investigated the mechanics of these judgments and found that if the bad event is low-risk, or the intervention is successful in preventing it, people judge the intervention to be an overreaction. In Study 4, a survey of 450 US participants showed that opinions of the risks and outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic correlated with overreaction judgments, and critically, those judgments of overreaction predicted non-compliance with public health measures.