In response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, societies face the formidable challenge of developing sustainable forms of sociability‐cumsocial‐distancing – enduring social life while containing the virus and preventing new outbreaks. Accordant public policies often balance between retributive (punishment‐based) and assistance (solidarity‐based) measures to foster responsible behaviour. Yet, the uncontrolled spreading of the disease has divided public opinion about which measures are best suited, and it has made salient group disparities in behaviour, potentially straining intergroup relations, elevating heated emotions, and undercutting coordinated international responses. In a 2 × 2 between‐subjects experiment, British citizens (N = 377) read about national in‐group or outgroup members (categorical differentiation), who were either conforming to or deviating from the corona regulations (normative differentiation). Participants then reported moral emotions towards the target national group and indicated support for public policies. In general, support for assistance policies outweighed support for retributive measures. Second, however, norm deviation was associated with less positive and more negative moral emotions, the latter category further relating to more punitiveness and less assistance support. Finally, respondents who read about norm‐violating outgroup members especially reported support for retributive measures, indicating that people might use norm deviation to justify outgroup derogation. We discuss implications for policymakers and formulate future research avenues.

中文翻译：

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惩罚还是协助？对团体内成员和团体外成员违反社会距离的反应各异。

为了应对COVID-19流行病，社会面临着巨大的挑战，即发展可持续的社交形式-社交-远离社会-在遏制病毒的同时维持社会生活并防止新的爆发。一致的公共政策通常在惩罚性措施和惩罚性措施之间取得平衡，以促进负责任的行为。然而，这种疾病的不受控制的传播已经引起公众舆论对哪种措施最合适的看法，这已经使群体的行为出现显着差异，潜在地拉紧了群体之间的关系，加剧了激烈的情绪，并削弱了协调一致的国际反应。在2×2的受试者间实验中，英国公民（N = 377），了解符合或不符合电晕放电规程（规范区分）的国家内部或外部成员（分类差异）。然后，参与者向目标民族报告了道德情感，并表示支持公共政策。总的来说，对援助政策的支持胜于对惩罚性措施的支持。第二，然而，规范偏离与较少的积极和较消极的道德情绪相关，后一种类别进一步与更多的惩罚性和较少的援助支持有关。最后，阅读过违反规范的外来成员的受访者特别报告了对惩罚措施的支持，表明人们可能会使用准则偏差来证明外出克减是正当的。