Moral Identity Predicts Adherence to COVID‐19 Mitigation Procedures Depending on Political Ideology: A Comparison Between the USA and New Zealand

Abstract

Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (e.g., COVID‐19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases, public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a person's moral identity may influence behavior and serve to increase compliance through different mechanisms: if a person sees compliance as the right thing to do (internalization) and/or if a person perceives compliance as something others will notice as the right thing to do (symbolization). We argue that in societies that are more politically polarized, people's political ideology may interact with their moral identity to predict compliance. We hypothesized that where polarization is high (e.g., USA), moral identity should positively predict compliance for liberals to a greater extent than for conservatives. However, this effect would not occur where polarization is low (e.g., New Zealand). Moral identity, political ideology, and support for three different COVID‐19 mitigation measures were assessed in both nations ( N = 1,980). Results show that while moral identity can influence compliance, the political context of the nation must also be taken into account.

Mental health hygiene during a health crisis: Exploring factors associated with media-induced secondary trauma in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The effect sizes reported in the current research are relatively small, potentially limiting the applicability of this work (R 2 for full models = 0.19, 0.21, and 0.19). We note however that these effect sizes are comparable to existing research in the wider COVID-19 related literature (e.g., McHugh et al, 2023 , Van Bavel et al, 2022 ). Despite these small effects the current research provides important insights into the possible links between media consumption and negative outcomes such as belief in conspiracy theories, and media induced trauma.…”

Fueling conspiracy beliefs: Political conservatism and the backlash against COVID‐19 containment policies

“…4 See Pew Research Survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/30/those-on-ideological-rightfavor-fewer-covid-19-restrictions-in-most-advanced-economies/. 5 Many peer-reviewed articles were published using this dataset, including studies by McHugh et al (2023), Sternisko et al (2023), and. For more information about the data, see https://osf.io/ tfsza/.…”

“…5 5 Many peer‐reviewed articles were published using this dataset, including studies by McHugh et al. (2023), Sternisko et al. (2023), and Van Bavel et al.…”

Predictors of Compliance with COVID-19 Guidelines Across Countries: The role of social norms, moral values, trust, stress, and demographic factors

“…COVID-19 has been construed as a moral crisis (McHugh et al, 2022), whereby responses to the pandemic required behaviours that affected various aspects of the population in different (and often unequal) ways (Patel et al, 2020;Templeton et al, 2020).…”