COVID‐19 mitigating practices such as ‘hand‐washing’, ‘social distancing’, or ‘social isolating’ are constructed as ‘moral imperatives’, required to avert harm to oneself and others. Adherence to COVID‐19 mitigating practices is presently high among the general public, and stringent lockdown measures supported by legal and policy intervention have facilitated this. In the coming months, however, as rules are being relaxed and individuals become less strict, and thus, the ambiguity in policy increases, the maintenance of recommended social distancing norms will rely on more informal social interactional processes. We argue that the moralization of these practices, twinned with relaxations of policy, may likely cause interactional tension between those individuals who do vs. those who do not uphold social distancing in the coming months: that is, derogation of those who adhere strictly to COVID‐19 mitigating practices and group polarization between ‘distancers’ and ‘non‐distancers’. In this paper, we explore how and why these processes might come to pass, their impact on an overall societal response to COVID‐19, and the need to factor such processes into decisions regarding how to lift restrictions.

中文翻译：

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“远距离”和“非远距离”？将COVID-19缓解措施道德化对持续行为改变的潜在社会心理影响。

COVID-19缓解措施，例如“洗手”，“社会疏远”或“社会隔离”被构造为“道德上的当务之急”，必须避免对自己和他人造成伤害。目前，公众对COVID-19缓解措施的遵守程度很高，而在法律和政策干预的支持下，严格的封锁措施对此起到了促进作用。但是，在接下来的几个月中，由于放宽了规则，个人变得越来越不严格，因此政策上的歧义越来越多，维持建议的社会疏离规范将依赖于更多非正式的社会互动过程。我们认为，这些做法的道德化以及放宽政策可能会在未来几个月内与不坚持社会疏离的个人之间造成相互作用的紧张关系：严格遵守COVID‐19缓解措施以及“分隔带”和“分隔带”之间的群体分化的人的克减。在本文中，我们探讨了这些流程如何以及为什么会通过，它们对社会对COVID-19的整体响应的影响，以及将此类流程纳入如何取消限制的决策中的必要性。