Disease avoidance motives trade-off against social motives, especially mate-seeking, to predict social distancing: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Many studies have sought to understand why people’s compliance with social distancing varied during the Covid-19 pandemic. Recent theory suggests that pathogen avoidance behavior is not based only on perceived risk, but on a trade-off between the perceived costs of pathogen exposure and the perceived benefits of social contact. We hypothesized that compliance with social distancing may therefore be explained by a trade-off between pathogen avoidance and social motives, especially mate-seeking. Two studies conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic gave results consistent with this proposition: compliance with social distancing was positively associated with disease avoidance motives but negatively associated with social, especially mating, motives. These associations remained after controlling for predictors identified by previous research, including risk perception and personality. Findings indicate that people who are more interested in seeking new romantic partners (e.g., young men) may be less inclined to socially distance and be more at risk of pathogen transmission.

Food disgust sensitivity predicts disease-preventing behaviour beyond the food domain in the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

“…So far, relatively few studies have looked at psychological factors predicting behaviours related to the COVID-19 pandemic [14]. On the basis that disgust has been associated with both behaviours related to the pandemic [32], general hygiene behaviour such as handwashing behaviour [29,41], and food-specific hygiene behaviour in the home kitchen [27], the present paper investigated the role food disgust sensitivity plays in this major health crisis caused by COVID-19. Specifically, the paper investigated the predictive power of food disgust sensitivity for various behaviours related to the mitigation of the pandemic, which are important to understand the related attitudes and behaviours.…”

“…Given this evidence, it is not surprising that disgust was also found to play an important role in the context of COVID-19, where hygiene behaviour and pathogen avoidance are crucial to contain the spread of the virus. Specifically, participants' behaviour in terms of hygiene and physical distancing was predicted by pathogen disgust [32].…”

“…We chose a food-specific measure of disgust sensitivity for three reasons. First, it has been demonstrated that there is a relationship between pathogen disgust and behaviours related to the pandemic [32]. Given that we know that pathogen disgust and food disgust sensitivity are positively correlated [25], we aimed to add to the evidence by investigating the role food disgust sensitivity plays in mitigating the effects of the pandemic.…”

Of pathogens and party lines: Social conservatism positively associates with COVID-19 precautions among U.S. Democrats but not Republicans

“…Greater attention to costs is needed to more fully understand cost-benefit tradeoffs. Accordingly, recent work has started to address the effects of tradeoffs on threat and pathogen avoidance behaviors [28,29]. In addition, the previously discussed empirical observations of conservative shifts in response to real-world threats likely implicitly summarize the cost-benefit trade-off calculations that individuals may be making.…”

“…Specifically, precautions taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic may reflect threat sensitivity in the pathogen domain in light of the real-world trade-offs between different threat domains. Indeed, speaking to the possibility of these kinds of trade-offs, initial evidence suggests that individuals make COVID-19 precaution trade-offs with the mate-seeking domain [28]. Further, because reports of actual behavior summarize many of the implicit calculations being made by individuals, COVID-19 precautions plausibly more accurately reveal the intersection of baseline threat sensitivity and trade-offs among multiple threat domains than do questions about hypothetical cues of pathogen presence, generic items about danger, or broad statements regarding concern about the pandemic.…”