Intentions to comply with COVID-19 preventive behaviors are associated with personal beliefs, independent of perceived social norms

Abstract

Social norms can be an effective way to promote public health and encourage healthy behaviors among individuals. The global COVID-19 pandemic has prompted health officials to call for new behavioral norms to help prevent the disease’s spread, for example “social distancing” measures. Yet whether people actually intend to engage in these behaviors (behavioral intention) may depend on both whether they personally find them effective (individual beliefs), and whether they think others will engage in them too (perceived norms). In this study we tested three hypotheses on the relationships between individual beliefs, perceived norms, and behavioral intentions related to COVID-19 preventive health behaviors. We predicted: H1) that perceptions of others’ beliefs about the importance and impact of preventive behaviors (perceived norms) would be lower than individuals’ own beliefs (i.e., a pluralistic ignorance effect); H2) that perceived norms and individual beliefs would each predict behavioral intentions; and H3) that the difference between perceived norms and individual beliefs would uniquely predict behavioral intentions. We observed large self-other differences in beliefs about preventive health behaviors (support for H1). However, only individuals' own beliefs were associated with behavioral intention, not perceived norms or the self-other gap (no support for H2 or H3). In short, individuals did not differ in their preventive behavioral intentions based on the differences (or their lack thereof) between perceived social norms and their personal beliefs. Participants who strongly believed that preventive behaviors are important ignored normative pressures from average Americans, who they perceived as less concerned than themselves. Together, these findings highlight the different roles personal beliefs and perceived norms might play in forming behavioral intentions.