TY - JOUR
T1 - Moralizing the COVID-19 Pandemic
T2 - Self-Interest Predicts Moral Condemnation of Other's Compliance, Distancing, and Vaccination
AU - Bor, Alexander
AU - Jørgensen, Frederik
AU - Lindholt, Marie Fly
AU - Petersen, Michael Bang
PY - 2022/5/6
Y1 - 2022/5/6
N2 - The emergence of the novel coronavirus has put societies under tremendous pressure to instigate massive and rapid behavior change. Throughout history, an effective strategy to facilitate novel behaviors has been to morally condemn those who do not behave in an appropriate way. Accordingly, here, we investigate if complying with the advice of health authorities—for example, to physically distance or vaccinate—has emerged as a moralized issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, we rely on data (N = 94K) from quota-sampled rolling cross-sectional online surveys from eight countries (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We find that large majorities find it justified to condemn those who do not keep a distance to others in public and around half of respondents blame ordinary citizens for the severity of the pandemic. Furthermore, we identify the most important predictors of condemnation to be behavior change and personal concern, while institutional trust and social distrust also play large but less consistent roles. Study 2 offers a registered replication of our findings on a representative sample of Britons (N = 1.5K). It shows that both moralization and condemnation of both vaccination and general compliance are best predicted by self-interested considerations.
AB - The emergence of the novel coronavirus has put societies under tremendous pressure to instigate massive and rapid behavior change. Throughout history, an effective strategy to facilitate novel behaviors has been to morally condemn those who do not behave in an appropriate way. Accordingly, here, we investigate if complying with the advice of health authorities—for example, to physically distance or vaccinate—has emerged as a moralized issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, we rely on data (N = 94K) from quota-sampled rolling cross-sectional online surveys from eight countries (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We find that large majorities find it justified to condemn those who do not keep a distance to others in public and around half of respondents blame ordinary citizens for the severity of the pandemic. Furthermore, we identify the most important predictors of condemnation to be behavior change and personal concern, while institutional trust and social distrust also play large but less consistent roles. Study 2 offers a registered replication of our findings on a representative sample of Britons (N = 1.5K). It shows that both moralization and condemnation of both vaccination and general compliance are best predicted by self-interested considerations.
KW - COVID-19
KW - compliance
KW - moral psychology
KW - moralization
KW - physical distancing
KW - vaccination
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85129453466&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/pops.12835
DO - 10.1111/pops.12835
M3 - Article
C2 - 35935033
AN - SCOPUS:85129453466
SN - 0162-895X
VL - 44
SP - 257
EP - 279
JO - Political Psychology
JF - Political Psychology
IS - 2
ER -