The politics of mask-wearing: Political preferences, reactance, and conflict aversion during COVID

Young, Dannagal G.; Rasheed, Huma; Bleakley, Amy; Langbaum, Jessica B.

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114836

Cited by 47 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Perhaps these policies have been perceived as threats to freedom and liberty by a sizable portion of the West's population, who predominantly hold individualistic values and whose compliance is primarily motivated by self-interest and a sense of individual obligation to support authorities ( Banker & Park, 2020 ; Favero & Pedersen, 2020 ; Murphy et al, 2020 ). As such, they might find preventive measures such as social distancing, mask-wearing, or vaccinations as annoying, inconvenient, or even a threat to their personal freedom ( Johnston, 2022 ; Rains et al, 2022 ; Young et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 mass media coverage in English and public reactions: a West-East comparison via Facebook posts

Pratama

Firmansyah

2022

PeerJ Computer Science

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Newspapers and other mass media outlets are critical in shaping public opinion on a variety of contemporary issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines how the pandemic is portrayed in the news and how the public reacted differently in the West and East using archival data from Facebook posts about COVID-19 news by English-language mass media between January 2020 and April 2022 (N = 711,646). Specifically, we employed the Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (Vader) to measure the news tone on each COVID-19 news item shared on Facebook by mass media outlets. In addition, we calculated a polarity score based on Facebook special reactions (i.e., love, angry, sad, wow, haha, and care) received by each post to measure public reactions toward it. We discovered that people in Western countries reacted significantly more negatively to COVID-19 news than their East counterparts, despite the fact that the news itself, in aggregate, generally contained a relatively similar level of neutral tone in both West and East media. The implications of these distinctions are discussed in greater detail.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 mass media coverage in English and public reactions: a West-East comparison via Facebook posts

Pratama

Firmansyah

2022

PeerJ Computer Science

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“…They found that the perceived effectiveness of such measures is a strong predictor of compliance with those behaviors. With respect to psychological factors, perceived loss of freedom in relation to preventative behaviors has been found to be negatively associated with mask-wearing, while conflict avoidance has shown a positive association with willingness to wear a mask [24]. Demographic factors also had an effect on safety behavior with regard to COVID-19 [25].…”

Section: Covid-19 Pandemic and Behaviormentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Results from a series of online experiments [52] have shown similar findings in that conservatives were predisposed to perceiving COVID-19 as less of a risk to their health and having a higher threshold for maximum acceptable levels of risk during the pandemic. Research [24] has also revealed that favorability towards Trump, as well as antipathy towards Joe Biden, has been both directly and indirectly associated with less adherence to mask-wearing.…”

Section: Politicization Of Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservative Media Use and COVID-19 Related Behavior: The Moderating Role of Media Literacy Variables

Borah

Lorenzano

Vishnevskaya

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no vaccine to cure or slow its impact due to the novelty of the virus, nor were there were any other standardized measures to handle its spread. Yet, despite the detrimental consequences of the pandemic and its impact on people’s lives, the behavior of individuals to combat the pandemic was not necessarily consistent with official guidelines. To make things worse, the pandemic was highly politicized in countries such as the U.S. With a help of a national survey from the U.S., we examine the associations between media literacy variables and willingness to perform recommended COVID-19 related health behavior. Moreover, we also examine the moderating role of conservative media use in this relationship. Our findings show that conservative media use was negatively associated with these protective behaviors, and that both media literacy variables were positively related with willingness to perform recommended COVID-19 related health behavior. Our results show that media literacy can mitigate some of the impact of conservative media use on individuals. Our findings help understand the complexity of protective behavior against the virus during a highly politicized pandemic.

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“…Another psychological factor that may glue together different strands of opposition is reactance to any government-imposed public health measure (e.g., [ 43 ]. Reactance has long been implicated in anti-vaccination attitudes (e.g., [ 42 ], and it also been identified as a driver of opposition to mask wearing [ 57 ]. Thus, while COVID-19 vaccine mandates may well be associated with disgruntlement [ 52 ] or reactance [ 39 , 43 ], mandates need not be the sole trigger of such adverse reactions.…”

Section: Mandates As Targets Not Triggersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public policy and conspiracies: The case of mandates

Lewandowsky

Holford²,

Schmid³

2022

Current Opinion in Psychology

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The politics of mask-wearing: Political preferences, reactance, and conflict aversion during COVID

Cited by 47 publications

References 57 publications

COVID-19 mass media coverage in English and public reactions: a West-East comparison via Facebook posts

COVID-19 mass media coverage in English and public reactions: a West-East comparison via Facebook posts

Conservative Media Use and COVID-19 Related Behavior: The Moderating Role of Media Literacy Variables

Public policy and conspiracies: The case of mandates

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