Predictors of non‐adherence to public health instructions during theCOVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

In response to the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, states have introduced public health measures to limit community transmission of the disease. These measures include public instructions regarding home isolation and quarantine, personal hygiene, restrictions on gathering and traveling, and social distancing. The instructions' efficacy in limiting the spread of the pandemic depends on public adherence to them. Despite the potentially harmful consequences for individuals and public health, nonadherence to the instructions (non-AtI) for the COVID-19 pandemic has been frequent. 1,2 The objective of this study was to identify predictors of non-adherence. The hypothesized predictors were chosen based on the clinical literature regarding risk factors for non-adherence to medical instructions 3 and engagement in risk-taking behavior. 4 These included demographic factors (e.g., male sex), health and personality factors (e.g., psychological distress, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] symptoms, low levels of pro-sociality, past risk-taking behavior), and perceptions regarding COVID-19 risk and instruction-related variables (e.g., exposure to the instructions). This study was approved by the ethics committee of the Seymour Fox School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The

COVID-19 Pandemic on Fire: Evolved Propensities for Nocturnal Activities as a Liability Against Epidemiological Control

“…Research on personal factors related to non-compliance with the pandemic safety best practices are still in the initial phases, but it is already possible to see an emerging pattern. The COVID-19 health rule-breakers, i.e., those contributing to non-compliance with the epidemiological safety guidance during the new coronavirus pandemic, tend to be males (Coroiu et al, 2020;Galasso et al, 2020;Nivette et al, 2020;Pollak et al, 2020;Sobol et al, 2020;Tomczyk et al, 2020), exhibit higher proneness to paranoia (Kowalski et al, 2020), and conspiracy beliefs (Biddlestone et al, 2020;Kowalski et al, 2020;Romer and Jamieson, 2020), show higher risk-taking (Miguel et al, 2020;Pollak et al, 2020;Zirenko et al, 2020), tend to not fear the virus, have low perceived risk of COVID-19 (Harper et al, 2020;Pollak et al, 2020), exhibit low self-control (Boylan et al, 2020;Nivette et al, 2020), use more alcohol and drugs (Taylor et al, 2020), tend to be smokers (Pollak et al, 2020), tend to be extraverted (Götz et al, 2020), tend to perceive more mating opportunities (e.g., potential sexual or romantic partners) (Zajenkowski et al, 2020), not have children (Pollak et al, 2020), have faster life history strategies (Corpuz et al, 2020), lower agreeableness (Asselmann et al, 2020;Zajenkowski et al, 2020), lower empathy (Miguel et al, 2020;Zirenko et al, 2020), higher levels of callousness and deceitfulness (Miguel et al, 2020), antisocial potential and moral disengagement from prevention rules (Nivette et al, 2020), higher psychological entitlement (i.e., high expectations for good outcomes, a lack of concern about others, and a distrust of authority figures) (Zitek and Schlund, 2020), and higher Dark Triad personali...…”

“…There is ontogenetic variation in human chronotype: evidence indicates a shift toward later chronotype (i.e., higher eveningness) during adolescence, reaching a peak in eveningness at around 19 years, then shifting back toward earlier chronotype (i.e., morningness) thereafter (Randler, 2016;Fischer et al, 2017). Individuals non-adherent to the preventive measures of the pandemic tend to have high levels of ADHD and high psychological distress (Pollak et al, 2020). Evening-oriented individuals are more represented among those with mental disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression, psychosis, and bipolar) and are in general associated with higher psychological distress and symptom severity (Fares et al, 2015;Fabbian et al, 2016;Jones et al, 2016Jones et al, , 2019Lane et al, 2016;cf.…”

“…Situational predictions of non-compliance are: unemployment status, being the woman head of a family, and having less information and low-quality knowledge about COVID-19 (Nzaji et al, 2020). Low exposure to the instructions is also related to non-adherence to safety measures (Pollak et al, 2020), as it is for media diets (Pedersen and Favero, 2020). Some research has even demonstrated that situational factors explained more variance in compliance than dispositional personality traits (Zajenkowski et al, 2020).…”

Background and concurrent factors predicting non-adherence to public health preventive measures during the chronic phase of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Despite the potentially harmful consequences for individuals and public health, non-adherence to the preventive measures (non-APM) for the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly at the acute phase, has been reported around the world (3)(4)(5)(6)(7). For designing effective public health policy, it is mandatory to identify the factors that predict non-APM.…”

“…In a survey conducted in Israel in April 2020, male gender, not having children, high levels of ADHD symptoms, smoking, past risk-taking behavior, and current psychological distress levels, all predicted non-APM. On the other hand, pro-sociality, understanding of the instructions, high perceived risk of COVID-19, and high perceived efficacy of the preventive measures predicted adherence (5).…”