Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Ko, Ahra
• Neuberg, Steven L
• Pick, Cari M
• Varnum, Michael E W
• Becker, D Vaughn

Titel

Responses to political partisans are shaped by a COVID-19-sensitive disease avoidance psychology: A longitudinal investigation of functional flexibility

Ist Teil von

• The American psychologist, 2024-03

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Psychological Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

PsycARTICLES

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• How do natural changes in disease avoidance motivation shape thoughts about and behaviors toward ingroup and outgroup members? During the COVID-19 pandemic, political party affiliation has been a strong predictor in the United States of COVID-19-related opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. Using a six-wave longitudinal panel survey of representative Americans (on Prolific, = 1,124, from April 2020 to February 2021), we explored how naturally occurring changes across time in both risks of COVID-19 infection and people's disease avoidance motivation shaped thoughts about and behaviors toward Republicans and Democrats (e.g., perceived infection threat, feelings of disgust, desires to avoid). We found a significant effect of dispositional level of motivation, over and above powerful effects of in-party favoritism/out-party derogation: Participants with a dispositionally stronger motivation to avoid disease showed greater infection management responses, especially toward Republicans; this held even for Republican participants. More importantly, we also found a significant interactive effect of -person variability and ecological infection risk: Participants who sensitively upregulated their motivation during the rapid spread of COVID-19 perceived greater infection threat by Republicans and felt less disgust toward and desire to avoid Democrats. This finding, too, held for Republican participants. These results provide evidence of functionally flexible -person psychological disease avoidance-a theoretically important process long presumed and now demonstrated-and suggest another mechanism contributing to U.S. political polarization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).