Politicizing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ideological Differences in Adherence to Social Distancing

Abstract

Data from two MTurk studies with U.S. respondents (total N =1,153) revealed an ideological divide in adherence to social distancing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, political conservatism inversely predicted compliance with behaviors aimed at preventing the spread of the COVID-19. Differences in reported social distancing were mediated by divergent perceptions of the health risk posed by COVID-19 (Studies 1 and 2), which were explained by differences in self-reported knowledge of COVID-19 (Study 1) and perceived media accuracy in covering the pandemic (Studies 1 and 2). The politicization of COVID-19 may have prompted conservatives to discount mainstream media reports of the severity of the virus, leading them to downplay its health risks and consequently adherence less to social distancing protocols. These effects hold when controlling for key demographic characteristics as well as psychological variables, including belief in science and COVID-19-related anxiety. Thus, political ideology may uniquely explain COVID-19 behavior.

Partisan differences in physical distancing are linked to health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…These findings also remained significant when controlling for counties' partisanship in terms of 2016 voting. These results, along with self-report data indicating similar findings 22 and evidence indicating a causal link between Fox News viewership and decreased social distancing 33 , suggest that Republican-leaning media downplaying the virus at the start of the pandemic may have signalled to Republicans that they should not take the virus very seriously, in turn potentially in part causing the observed partisan differences. This possibility underscores the importance of considering communication and mass media when designing public health messaging.…”

“…These data suggest that partisan differences in self-reported attitudes toward COVID-19 (refs. [18][19][20][21][22] ) are mirrored by behavioural differences at the US county level.…”

“…Furthermore, nationally representative Gallup polls documented that Republicans were less likely to report practising physical distancing in the previous 24 h than Democrats (7-23 March 2020: ~78 versus ~90%), and this gap strengthened with time through mid-June (8-14 June: ~48 versus ~89%) 19 . Finally, several studies surveying Americans on online data collection platforms have shown that self-identified conservatives are less likely to endorse a variety of physical distancing measures (for example, staying 6 feet away from others, wearing masks) [20][21][22] . These polls reflect a clear partisan gap in beliefs about the pandemic, but do they translate into real behaviour?…”

Compliance Without Fear: Individual-Level Predictors of Protective Behavior During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The elderly and individuals with particular chronic diseases are at very high risk of getting seriously ill, whereas most other groups are much less likely to get hospitalized and often suffer only mild symptoms (Jordan, Adab and Cheng 2020). Consistent with this, research from early cases of COVID-19 found that age (Rosenfeld, Rothgerber and Wilson 2020) and direct measures of fear (Brouard, Vasilopoulos and Becher 2020;Harper et al 2020;Kachanoff et al 2020) are major determinants of protective behavior compliance.…”

Weather and Policy Influences on Mobility during the U.S. COVID-19 Pandemic

“…On Saturday March 21, almost all states achieved their maximum decrease in mobility as measured by potential person-to-person encounter rate (see Methods), marking the effective beginning of a stay-at-home period nationwide. Since response to the virus in the U.S. has been widely politicized, 7,8 we were interested in human behavior, reflected through mobility, in response to policies. Figure 1 shows the timing of statewide policies and of a variety of metrics based on mobility data (grocery store visitation peak in yellow and maximum decrease in mobility in red).…”