It’s Alive! Increasing Protective Action against the Coronavirus through Anthropomorphism and Construal

Abstract

It's Alive! Increasing Protective Action Against the Coronavirus Through Anthropomorphism and Construal News outlets often depict the coronavirus as a "burglar" or a "killer"-even though viruses are not technically alive. While imbuing this virus with human-like qualities may enable the public to feel as if they are better able to understand it, does anthropomorphizing the coronavirus lead people to adopt protective behaviors against the spread of the disease? Integrating construal level theory, we argue that anthropomorphizing an agent makes it seem more understandable, which decreases its psychological distance. And through construal matching between the message and consumers' temporal focus, we demonstrate that when the coronavirus is anthropomorphized, people are more likely to adopt protective measures when they are focused on the present versus the future because consumers believe the anthropomorphized coronavirus to be more powerful. Our findings contribute to both anthropomorphism and construal level theory research. Additionally, our findings offer implications for health communication strategies and public policy.

The Effect of Anthropomorphic Appeal on Consumer Protective Behavior in Service Facilities

“…Anthropomorphism and future messages have a significant positive effect on consumer purchase intentions of bad food (Shao et al, 2020). Likewise, (Wan et al, 2020) suggests that the anthropomorphic message of coronavirus affects protective behavior.…”

“…In this study, consumers will perceive the risk of anthropomorphic objects (anthropomorphic corona) being higher than objects (nonanthropomorphic) and then affect protective behavior. The study of (Wan et al, 2020) found that anthropomorphization of an agent, especially a negative agent, will make the agent appear more powerful and can affect how willing consumers are to act against this agent.…”

“…Previous research has shown that consumers perform protective behavior depending on temporal construal focus, namely whether consumers focus on the present or the future (Wan et al, 2020). Individuals tend to perform protective behaviors such as wearing masks and gloves if they tend to focus on the present.…”

“…Individuals tend to perform protective behaviors such as wearing masks and gloves if they tend to focus on the present. According to (Wan et al, 2020), the coronavirus is an anthropomorphic language that increases protective behavior, relative to consumers who have a focus on the present. As well as research by (Wan et al, 2020) in this study, an experiment was carried out on Indonesian consumers, looking at the effect of anthropomorphic Coronavirus messages on health protocol adoption behavior.…”

Public Health, Polio, and Pandemics: Fear and Anxiety about Health in Children’s Literature

“…By anthropomorphizing the virus, the threat of illness is downplayed. Research has shown that anthropomorphizing diseases in health communication material increased people’s motivations to follow health recommendations (Wang et al, 2019 , Wang et al, 2020 ). In children’s literature, “the unfamiliar is anthropomorphized to make it familiar, comprehensible, and less worrisome” (Cox, 2017 , p. 22).…”