The interplay between partisanship, forecasted COVID-19 deaths, and support for preventive policies

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that has forced governments around the world to implement large-scale interventions such as school closures and national lockdowns. Previous research has shown that partisanship plays a major role in explaining public attitudes towards these policies and beliefs about the intensity of the crisis. However, it remains unclear whether and how partisan differences in policy support relate to partisan gaps in beliefs about the number of deaths that the pandemic will cause. Do individuals who forecast fewer COVID-19 deaths show less agreement with preventive measures? How does partisanship correlate with people’s beliefs about the intensity of the crisis and their support for COVID-19 policies? Here, we sought to answer these questions by performing a behavioral experiment in Argentina (Experiment 1, N = 640) and three quasi-replication studies in Uruguay (Experiment 2, N = 372), Brazil (Experiment 3, N = 353) and the United States (Experiment 4, N = 630). In all settings, participants forecasted the number of COVID-19 deaths in their country after considering either a high or low number, and then rated their agreement with a series of interventions. This anchoring procedure, which experimentally induced a large variability in the forecasted number of deaths, did not modify policy preferences. Instead, each experiment provided evidence that partisanship was a key indicator of the optimism of forecasts and the degree of support for COVID-19 policies. Remarkably, we found that the number of forecasted deaths was robustly uncorrelated with participants’ agreement with preventive measures designed to prevent those deaths. We discuss these empirical observations in the light of recently proposed theories of tribal partisan behavior. Moreover, we argue that these results may inform policy making as they suggest that even the most effective communication strategy focused on alerting the public about the severity of the pandemic would probably not translate into greater support for COVID-19 preventive measures.

Better than my neighbor? Testing for overconfidence in COVID-19 preventive behaviors in Latin America

“…Interpersonal trust is vital: avoiding the spread of the virus depends not only on our own behavior, but also on the behavior of other’s – particularly as countries reopen and people interact more with each other outside of their COVID-19 “bubbles”. Moreover, trusting communication by governmental authorities is also important as partisanship matters for the spread of the virus [ 23 , 25 ]. On this front, the Latin American countries covered by this survey present a challenging backdrop.…”

Trust in the scientific research community predicts intent to comply with COVID-19 prevention measures: An analysis of a large-scale international survey dataset

“…Even if diverse preventive measures that have been found to be effective are planned and implemented by agents, without people's compliance with the measures, successful control of the pandemic could not be achieved [6]. For instance, rejection of and noncompliance with the recommended and required preventive measures associated with political debates resulted in the recent drastic increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths caused by the Delta variant in multiple countries across the globe [5,7]. Hence, it would be important to understand which factors are involved in people's compliance as well as noncompliance with preventive measures.…”

Risk perception, but also political orientation, modulate behavioral response to COVID-19: A randomized survey experiment

“…However, psychological distress was also elevated during that period ( Torrente et al, 2021 , 2022 ). Furthermore, political ideology influenced citizen support for restrictions in Argentina even more than public health concerns ( Freira et al, 2021 ) as was the case in other countries such as the United States ( Grossman et al, 2020 ; Clinton et al, 2021 ). Therefore, the announcement of new restrictions could be a driver for greater political polarization with the consequence of less support and erosion of the effectiveness of health measures.…”

“…Previous research has shown that messages that heighten risk appraisals change intentions and behaviors related to health protection and safety in different domains, such as vaccination, dieting, dental hygiene, sun protection, driving, or medical testing ( Sheeran et al, 2014 ). However, the acceptance of government restrictions is plausibly a different kind of health behavior, more heavily influenced by factors distinct from risk perception, like ideology and trust ( Freira et al, 2021 ). Considering these differences with other health behaviors, it could be of interest to know if acceptance of restrictions could be modulated also by messages that heighten risk appraisals.…”