In a collaboration with two former students (Laurel Peterson and Sarah H. DiMuccio) I collected representative data from 1000 US adults early in the pandemic. With a 2-week follow-up, we have examined the predictors of COVID-related feelings, cognitions, and behaviors.
First, we found that greater descriptive norms and favorable prototypes predicted prevention behaviors (Peterson et al, 2021). These results held across demographic groups, political affiliation, and severity of regional outbreaks.
Second, we found that when contrasting cognitive risk (personal likelihood of COVID-19 infection or death) and affective risk (worry about COVID-19), affective risk better predicted precautions (Helweg-Larsen et al., 2022). In addition, results showed that overestimating the severity of the outbreak predicted more affective risk (but not cognitive risk) and in turn more precautions.
Third, we examined the role of political ideology gap in taking precautions (Helweg-Larsen et al., 2023). Politically conservative Americans took fewer precautions due to lower worry (but unexpectedly not due to lower perceived risk). As predicted, when trust was high, the ideology gap was muted for predicting precautions as well as for predicting perceived risk and worry.