Compassionate goals predict COVID-19 health behaviors during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Abstract

We predicted that people with compassionate goals to support others and not harm them practiced more COVID-19 health behaviors during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to protect both themselves and others from infection. Three studies (N = 1,143 American adults) supported these predictions and ruled out several alternative explanations. Compassionate goals unrelated to the health context predicted COVID-19 health behaviors better than the general motivation to be healthy (Studies 2 and 3). In contrast, general health motivation predicted general health behaviors better than did compassionate goals. Compassionate goals and political ideology each explained unique variance in COVID-19 health behaviors (Studies 1–3). Compassionate goals predict unique variance in COVID-19 health behaviors beyond empathic concern, communal orientation, and relational self-construal (Study 3), supporting the unique contribution of compassionate goals to understanding health behaviors. Our results suggest that ecosystem motivation is an important predictor of health behaviors, particularly in the context of a highly contagious disease.

The COVID-19 Framing Dataset: How Secondary Data Can Be Used to Explore Paradoxical Attitudes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In the COVID-19 pandemic, adherence to preventive behaviors was shown to be more likely among individuals with high empathy and care for others and less likely among those with egoistic motives (Christner et al, 2020;Huang et al, 2020;Ospina et al, 2021). We therefore found it important to cover individualist versus collectivist motives in some of our studies.…”

Exploring the impact of motivations on individual online and offline preventive actions against COVID-19

“…People with more compassionate goals reported doing COVID-19 health behaviors because they wanted to protect themselves, close others, and distant others from COVID-19. (Ospina et al, 2021) Prosocial motivation…”

“…The concern-for-self and concern-for-others motivation not only impact individual information processing tendencies but also individual actual behaviors (Abu-Tayeh et al, 2018;Campos-Mercade et al, 2021;Jordan et al, 2021;Oreg & Nov, 2008;Ospina et al, 2021). Regarding behaviors of contributors in open-source projects, Oreg and Nov (2008) found that individuals who contribute to software development place more emphasis on self-concern motivation such as reputation building and self-development, while content contributors concern with helping others more.…”

“…Finally, this study thinks that the three motivations are situation-specific and goal-oriented in nature instead of personal inherent characteristics. It means that these three motivations would be activated by individual perceptions of practical conditions related to COVID-19 (Baranik et al, 2022;Ospina et al, 2021;Tang et al, 2017). As a consequence, this study focuses on three situational factors highlighted in the STOPS theory, i.e., problem recognition, involvement recognition, and constraint recognition, and further investigate their influence on situational motivation, concern-for-self, and concern-for-others motivation.…”

Stability of pro-sociality and trust amid the Covid-19: panel data from the Netherlands

“…Both pro-sociality and trust can enable individuals to cope up with difficult situations caused by pandemic, extend help towards others and cooperate with each other for repairing the damage caused to the societal setup, political institutions and the economic development (Bjørnskov and Méon 2013 ; Brañas-Garza et al 2022 ; Brück et al 2020 ). Moreover, recent evidence also suggests that prosocial people are more likely to take preventive measures (such as social distancing, staying home, wearing masks and intent of vaccination) for the containment of Covid-19 and hence make individual-level contributions for the overall safety and improvement of the society (Campos-Mercade et al 2021 ; Ospina et al 2021 ; Yu et al 2021 ).…”