Functional fear predicts public health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic

TLDR

During the COVID‑19 pandemic, health professionals collaborate with social scientists to guide policy, yet research on how individual emotional and personality differences predict virus‑mitigating behaviors remains limited. The study aimed to examine how self‑perceived risk, fear of COVID‑19, moral foundations, and political orientation predict behavior change during the pandemic. Participants (N = 324) completed questionnaires assessing perceived risk, fear, moral foundations, political orientation, and pandemic‑related behavior change. Results showed that fear of COVID‑19 was the sole significant predictor of positive behavior change, with no influence from political orientation.

Abstract

In the current context of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), health professionals are working with social scientists to inform government policy on how to slow the spread of the virus. An increasing amount of social scientific research has looked at the role of public message framing, for instance, but few studies have thus far examined the role of individual differences in emotional and personality-based variables in predicting virus-mitigating behaviors. In this study we recruited a large international community sample (N = 324) to complete measures of self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, fear of the virus, moral foundations, political orientation, and behavior change in response to the pandemic. Consistently, the only predictor of positive behavior change (e.g., social distancing, improved hand hygiene) was fear of COVID-19, with no effect of politically-relevant variables. We discuss these data in relation to the potentially functional nature of fear in global health crises.