Reductions in perceived COVID‐19 threat amid UK’s mass public vaccination programme coincide with reductions in outgroup avoidance (but not prejudice)

Abstract

It has long been proposed that perceptions of threat contribute to greater outgroup negativity. Much of the existing evidence on the threat–prejudice association in the real world, however, is cross‐sectional in nature. Such designs do not adequately capture individual‐level changes in constructs, and how changes in constructs relate to changes in other theoretically relevant constructs. The current research exploited the unique opportunity afforded by the mass COVID‐19 vaccination programme in the United Kingdom to explore whether reductions in pathogen threat coincide with reductions in outgroup prejudice and avoidance. A two‐wave longitudinal study ( N 1 = 912, N 2 = 738) measured British adult's perceptions of COVID‐19 threat and anti‐immigrant bias before and during mass vaccine rollout in the United Kingdom. Tests of latent change models demonstrated that perceived COVID‐19 threat significantly declined as the vaccine programme progressed, as did measures of outgroup avoidance tendencies, but not prejudiced attitudes. Critically, change in threat was systematically correlated with change in outgroup avoidance: those with greater reductions in perceived COVID‐19 threat were, on average, those with greater reductions in outgroup avoidance. Findings provide important and novel insights into the implications of disease protection strategies for intergroup relations during an actual pandemic context, as it unfolds over time.

Ideologically‐based contact avoidance during a pandemic: Blunt or selective distancing from ‘others’?

“…Indeed, given that there is sizeable between‐country variability in right‐wing parties’ responses to the pandemic both in terms of narratives and policies (Wondreys & Mudde, 2022), future research should explore the influence of individual differences in political ideology among participants nested in other countries and subject to different political party framing. Please note that we also limited our analysis to White British participants in part because we did not have enough non‐Whites to confidently explore other British subgroups (for similar practice, see Meleady & Hodson, 2022; Zhao et al., 2022). Future research, including that in Britain, could expand consideration to other demographics to examine the generalizability of the findings.…”

“…Data were collected from 400 participants from the online participant panel Prolific. Because the UK is largely White, we focused on White British participants only (for similar practice, see Meleady & Hodson, 2022; Zhao et al., 2022). Data from three mixed‐race and three non‐British participants were excluded.…”

“…We anticipated that reactions to the COVID‐19 pandemic would probably be complex and nuanced. Consider that experimentally induced COVID threats among White Americans have increased discrimination towards Asians (see Lu et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2022), whereas a British study (Meleady & Hodson, 2022) tracking naturally occurring changes in COVID‐perceptions over time found that decreases in COVID‐threat coincided with reduced outgroup avoidance (and no changes in anti‐immigrant attitudes). Consider also that, during COVID‐19, RWA (characterized by conventionality, submission to authorities, and punitiveness towards outgroups) decreased in Germany (Heller et al., 2022) but increased in the United States (Pazhoohi & Kingstone, 2021), whereas other American research found little association between political ideology and objective COVID‐related changes (e.g., cases; restrictions) (Stern & Axt, 2022).…”

A behavioural immune system perspective on disgust and social prejudice

“…However, evidence that COVID-19 led to a general increase in prejudice and discrimination towards out-groups is mixed. For example, one study found that a decrease in perceived COVID-19 threat following the UK's mass vaccination campaign was associated with lower out-group avoidance, but not with lower self-reported prejudice 97 . Another study found that participants who scored higher on disgust sensitivity and participants who perceived a greater risk of infection preferred to keep a greater distance from out-group members 98 .…”

Unity or Estrangement Under Crises? Perceived Resource Scarcity Moderates the Effect of a Common Threat on Intergroup Cooperation

“…Common Threat. We assessed the COVID-19 common threat using an adapted five-item common threat scale (Adam-Troian & Bagci, 2021;Meleady & Hodson, 2022; for example, ''COVID-19 constitutes a threat across the country''; 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Higher scores represent a greater common threat (a = .74).…”