Most health models emphasize individual factors in predicting health behavior. However, in the context of COVID‐19 where the immediate response to stopping the spread of the virus requires collective efforts and change, other sociopolitical factors need to be considered. Prior research points to health behaviors being impacted by neighborhood and national social relations, social identification, confidence in government and political orientation. This research, though, is generally piecemeal (or specific), tends to be cross‐sectional, and is usually not oriented to pandemics. These issues are addressed in the current research. A two‐wave study with a representative sample of Australians (NWave 1 = 3028) gathered during COVID‐19 examined sociopolitical factors at the local and national level as predictors of health behaviors one month later. Four models were tested. These encapsulated geographic levels (local or national) and two health behaviors (hand hygiene or physical distance). In the three of the four models, social identification was a significant predictor of health behavior, while controlling for sociodemographic and individual‐level measures. There were more mixed results for social relations and confidence in government. There is evidence that to better promote health behaviors sociopolitical factors need to be more prominent in public policy and health behavior models. The goal of this study is to examine how sociopolitical factors impact physical distance and hand hygiene during the Australian COVID‐19 pandemic. Based on social cohesion literature and the social identity approach, we expected three social cohesion dimensions (social identification, confidence in government and social relations) to predict greater health behaviors one month later. Political orientation was also expected to predict health behaviors. The results show that social identification consistently predicts health behaviors, with weaker evidence for political orientation and confidence in the government, and mixed evidence for social relations. This research highlights the importance of considering and strengthening the sociopolitical context in our response to pandemics.

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An emerging literature suggests that the success of social movements depends, partly, on their ability to garner support from third-party groups. One factor that appears to predict support is social movements' use of nonviolent (compared to violent) strategies to achieve their goals. However, this literature is not definitive. Herein, we report the results of a meta-analysis of research that has assessed the effect of the use of nonviolence on third-party support (k = 16, N = 4598). A small-to-moderate positive effect was observed, d = 0.25. Additionally, research that used a control or baseline comparison group suggested that using nonviolent strategies marginally (p = .090) increased people's willingness to help the movement (d = 0.17) while adopting violent strategies did not increase or decrease people's willingness to help the movement (d = −0.03). Publication bias was evidenced by bigger effect sizes of published (vs. unpublished) studies. Target (i.e., state vs. social issues) and location of the protest (i.e., domestic vs. foreign) were not significant moderators, whereas the context (i.e., real vs. hypothetical scenarios) was, although marginally. Results suggest that it behooves social movements to adopt nonviolent strategies if third-party support is desired.

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