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

Abstract

Physical distancing is a crucial aspect of most countries’ strategies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. However, keeping distance to others in public requires significant changes in conduct and behavior relative to ordinary circumstances. Throughout history, an effective strategy to make people engage in such behavioral change has been to morally condemn those who do not behave in an appropriate way. Accordingly, here, we investigate whether physical distancing has emerged as a moralized issue during the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially explaining the massive changes in behavior that have occurred across societies to halter the spread of the pandemic. Specifically, we utilize time-sensitive, representative survey evidence from eight Western democracies to examine the extent to which people (1) find it justified to condemn those who do not keep a distance to others in public and (2) blame ordinary citizens for the severity of the pandemic. The results demonstrate that physical distancing has indeed become a moral issue in most countries in the early phases of the pandemic. Furthermore, we identify the most important predictors of moralization to be age, behavioral change, social trust, and trust in the government. Except for minor differences, this pattern is observed within all countries in the sample. While moralization was high during the first wave of the pandemic, temporal analyses also indicate that moralization is lower in the second wave of the pandemic, potentially making it more difficult to engage in sufficient behavioral changes.

Increased Pressure Lowers Trust Among Unvaccinated: Effects of the Announcement of Re-Introducing Covid-Passports in Denmark

“…Moralization involves targeting and condemnation of the group of unvaccinated (Bor et al, 2021) and, hence, may facilitate feelings of exclusion and marginalization. Research outside of the pandemic demonstrates that such feelings are strong predictors of distrust in the political system (Petersen et al, 2020).…”

Balancing the Freedom-Security Tradeoff During Crises and Disasters

“…People have begun to see government interventions to stop the spread of the virus as sacred and may be unwilling to make tradeoffs for other causes (Graso et al, 2021). Consistent with research on moral outrage, people condemn and shun those who do not abide by social distancing or mask policies (Bor et al, 2020;Söderlund, 2020). And the more moralized COVID-19 safety has become for individuals, the more they report adhering to government-advised prevention behaviors (Chan, 2021;Christner et al, 2020).…”

Discriminatory Attitudes Against the Unvaccinated During a Global Pandemic

“…Strikingly, antipathy towards the unvaccinated among vaccinated people (13 percentage points) is two and a half times the size of antipathy towards Middle Eastern immigrants (5 percentage points, 95%CI [5,6]. Figure OA4 juxtaposes country level estimates of antipathy towards the two groups.…”

“…Spearman's rank order correlation between death and prejudice is ρ = −0.65, q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q ARG AUS AUT Deaths / 100K Antipathy towards the Unvaccinated q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q ARG AUS AUT Social Trust (%) q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q q ARG AUS AUT 95%CI [-0.84, -0.30]. We believe this association can be explained by variation in levels of concern across countries; countries where elites and citizens were more concerned about the health impact of the pandemic were more successful at implementing the necessary restrictions, in part due to strong bottom up pressures from laypeople condemning acts of norm-breaking [5]. We also find that prejudice is higher in countries with higher social trust ρ = 0.57, 95%CI…”

“…Survey research shows that divisions based on vaccination status are also emerging among laypeople. Individuals who comply with the advice of health authorities morally condemn those refusing vaccination for violating a social contract in the midst of a crisis [5,21,43] and those refusing vaccination report that they feel pressured against their will [36]. Furthermore, vaccination status is consistently aligned with other political opinions such as trust in science, authorities and the political system, and e.g.…”