Moralizing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Self-Interest Predicts Moral Condemnation of Other's Compliance, Distancing, and Vaccination

Alexander Bor*, Frederik Jørgensen, Marie Fly Lindholt, Michael Bang Petersen

*Corresponding author af dette arbejde

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift/Konferencebidrag i tidsskrift /Bidrag til avisTidsskriftartikelForskningpeer review

26 Citationer (Scopus)
35 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The emergence of the novel coronavirus has put societies under tremendous pressure to instigate massive and rapid behavior change. Throughout history, an effective strategy to facilitate novel behaviors has been to morally condemn those who do not behave in an appropriate way. Accordingly, here, we investigate if complying with the advice of health authorities—for example, to physically distance or vaccinate—has emerged as a moralized issue during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, we rely on data (N = 94K) from quota-sampled rolling cross-sectional online surveys from eight countries (Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We find that large majorities find it justified to condemn those who do not keep a distance to others in public and around half of respondents blame ordinary citizens for the severity of the pandemic. Furthermore, we identify the most important predictors of condemnation to be behavior change and personal concern, while institutional trust and social distrust also play large but less consistent roles. Study 2 offers a registered replication of our findings on a representative sample of Britons (N = 1.5K). It shows that both moralization and condemnation of both vaccination and general compliance are best predicted by self-interested considerations.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftPolitical Psychology
Vol/bind44
Nummer2
Sider (fra-til)257-279
Antal sider23
ISSN0162-895X
DOI
StatusUdgivet - apr. 2023

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