Political ideology predicts preventative behaviors and infections amid COVID-19 in democracies

Tung, Hans H.; Chang, Tsung-Chou; Lin, Ming‐Jen

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115199

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Future investigations should also include more vaccines (e.g., childhood and adolescence vaccines) and a wider range of sociopolitical contexts (e.g., at more points in time during a prolonged pandemic; in different countries) to assess the generalizability of this study's results and refine its suppositions. Given recent research findings on how political identification is differentially associated with COVID-related risk perceptions and vaccine acceptance in the United States compared to many other countries (Tung et al, 2022), it is possible that the current study's findings regarding the other vaccines are also specific to the US context. More crosscountry studies are needed to explore this possibility and illuminate the conditions under which political identification may differentially shape vaccine acceptance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Exploring and contextualizing the associations among political identification, vaccine risk and benefit perceptions, and vaccine acceptance

Chen

2023

Risk Analysis

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There is considerable research on the influence of political partisanship on vaccine acceptance. However, the current study is one of the first to investigate how political identification is related to risk and benefit perceptions vis‐à‐vis vaccines. Based on survey data collected in the United States regarding four different vaccines at three points in time (n = 383 for April–June 2012; n = 364 for March 2020; n = 334 for April–May 2020), Democrats were found to have more positive attitudes toward vaccinations in general and hold more favorable risk and benefit perceptions of pandemic and routine vaccines overall compared to Republicans. However, the onset of a pandemic can serve as an equalizing force and motivate similar risk and benefit perceptions across party lines, but this force can wane quickly when the information environment is politicized. For political partisans who are ideologically oriented to be more hesitant toward vaccines, two conditions can help sustain their favorable vaccine perceptions during a pandemic: (a) when they identify with the governing political party, and (b) when there are consistent reassurances of vaccine safety and effectiveness from their partisan leadership. Given that risk and benefit perceptions were found to be consistently associated with vaccine acceptance across contexts in this study, communication aimed at encouraging vaccinations should always address the risks and benefits of a vaccine in ways that are tailored for individuals with different political affiliations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Exploring and contextualizing the associations among political identification, vaccine risk and benefit perceptions, and vaccine acceptance

Chen

2023

Risk Analysis

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“…The themes of fear and uncertainty generated by the unrestricted sharing of information via social media were also suggested by medical sources as important drivers of MDM (Ghaddar et al 2022), resulting from the fact that during crises, the psychological needs of ordinary people "are unfulfilled, leading to frustration", which in turn fueled conspiratorial thinking (Wang et al 2022). Social science sources shared in the sentiment, adding that during such crises, conspiracy theories tend to become popular (Bridgman et al 2020;Ferreira et al 2022;Tung, Chang, and Lin 2022), especially as the "constant dissemination of sensationalist reports regarding " through social media creates a "climate of fear….…”

Section: Mdm: Drivers and Victimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet another salient theme across the body of data was the framing of both MDM spreaders and victims as politically conservative individuals who valued personal freedoms over the greater, societal good and were therefore more likely to have opposed public health guidance, including restrictions, designed to protect this good. So for example, the paradigmatic political MDM spreader was taken to be former US president Donald Trump, while paradigmatic victims were, as per medical sources, generally "right-wing" (Tung, Chang, and Lin 2022;Wang et al 2022), or, as per social science sources, often "Trump supporters" (Koon et al 2021;E. Lee et al 2023;Romer and Jamieson 2021a), allegedly more biased than their liberal counterparts.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So for example, medical sources referred to a "physician accused of promoting anti-science views" (Rubin 2022), or described "anti-science aggression", within and outside of medicine, and called for "combating anti-science" (Hotez, Batista, Amor, et al 2021), referring to views that challenge the knowledge claims of "epistemic authorities", as defined earlier. For their part, social science sources deployed expressions such as "anti-science sentiments" (Koon et al 2021), "science denier," (Labbé et al 2022) and "right-wing COVID deniers" organizing protests against lockdown, mandatory masking, and social distancing, despite, according to the authors, the clear benefit of these measures (Tung, Chang, and Lin 2022). Finally, experts appeared especially concerned with "anti-vaxx" or "anti-vaccine" activists and movements, believed to produce and spread MDM.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Trust Us - We Are the (Covid-19 Misinformation) Experts: A critical scoping review of expert meanings of ‘misinformation’ in the Covid era

Chaufan,

Hemsing,

Heredia

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Background: Since the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic, prominent social actors and institutions have warned about the threat of misinformation, i.e., false or misleading information, calling on the public to join in a global crusade against it. However, neither the premises underlying expert claims nor the standards that experts use to identify truth from falsehood have been appraised. Objectives: We conducted a critical scoping review of the medical and social scientific literature, examining what this literature means by misinformation. Methods: We followed the framework of Arksey and O’Malley for scoping reviews informed by the critical perspective of the “what is the problem represented to be” approach to policy analysis. Medical sources were identified from PubMed and from three medical journals - the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine – and social science sources were identified from the journal Social Science & Medicine and from within refereed publications of self-identified and socially recognized “misinformation experts”, using a specified combination of search terms (e.g., “covid-19”; “misinformation”). Data were charted independently by two researchers. The protocol was registered in Open Science Frame. Findings: Across the data, we found that verifiability relied largely on the claims of socially recognized epistemic authorities to the exclusion of independent evidentiary standards. Further, “epistemic authority” did not depend on subject matter expertise, but rather on a new type of “expertise” - in misinformation itself. Finally, policy solutions to the alleged threat that misinformation poses to democracy and human rights called for, paradoxically, suppressing information unverified, and debate unmanaged, by experts, in the name of protecting democracy and rights. Notably, we identified no pockets of resistance to these dominant meanings and uses. Conclusions: We assess the implications of our findings for democratic public policy, and for fundamental rights and freedoms. The study is part of a larger project examining geopolitics, medicalization, and social control in the Covid era.

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“…Political orientation and its relationship to trust have been found to significantly impact COVID-19 prevention behaviours [ 11 - 13 ]. The ideologies underlying political identities may affect a person’s belief in their national governments and institutions, particularly if they disagree with the current party in office [ 11 ].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

In the COVID-19 pandemic, who did we trust? An eight-country cross-sectional study

Schluter,

Généreux,

Landaverde

et al. 2023

J Glob Health

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Background Trust is a key determinant of health, but has been undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated infodemic. Using data from eight countries, we aimed to epidemiologically describe levels of trust in health, governments, news media organisations, and experts, and measure the impact of political orientation and COVID-19 information sources on participant’s levels of trust. Methods We simultaneously conducted a stratified randomised online cross-sectional study across eight countries on adults aged ≥18 years between 6 and 18 November 2020. We employed crude and adjusted weighted regression analyses. Results We included 9027 adults with a mean age of 47 years (range = 18-99), of whom 4667 (51.7%) were female. Trust in health experts ranked highest across all countries (mean (x̄) = 7.83; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 7.79-7.88), while trust in politicians ranked lowest (x̄ = 5.34; 95% CI = 5.28, 5.40). In adjusted analyses, political orientation and utilised information sources were significantly associated with trust. Individuals using higher levels of health information sources trusted health authorities more than those using lower levels (mean difference = 1.12; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.14). Similarly, individuals using higher levels of government information sources (mean difference = 1.55; 95% CI = 1.43, 1.64) and those using higher levels of new media information sources (mean difference = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.06, 1.28) had highest trust in governments/politicians and news media, respectively. However, there was little difference in trust in health, government, or news media between individuals using higher or lower levels of social media information sources. Conclusions Trust is a key determinant of health, but has been politically fragile during this infodemic. High compliance with public health measures is key to combatting infectious diseases. In terms of people’s trust, our findings suggest that politicians and governments worldwide should coordinate their response with health experts and authorities to maximise the success of public health measures.

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Political ideology predicts preventative behaviors and infections amid COVID-19 in democracies

Cited by 8 publications

References 27 publications

Exploring and contextualizing the associations among political identification, vaccine risk and benefit perceptions, and vaccine acceptance

Exploring and contextualizing the associations among political identification, vaccine risk and benefit perceptions, and vaccine acceptance

Trust Us - We Are the (Covid-19 Misinformation) Experts: A critical scoping review of expert meanings of ‘misinformation’ in the Covid era

In the COVID-19 pandemic, who did we trust? An eight-country cross-sectional study

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