Given the persistent threat posed by infectious disease throughout human history, people have a sophisticated suite of cognitive and behavioral strategies designed to mitigate exposure to disease vectors. Previous research suggests that one such strategy is avoidance of unfamiliar outgroup members. We thus examined the relationship between dispositional worry about disease and support for COVID-19-related travel bans across three preregistered studies (N = 764) conducted at the outset of the pandemic in the United States and Singapore. Americans higher in Perceived Infectability were more supportive of travel bans, whereas Singaporeans higher in Germ Aversion were more supportive of travel bans. In Study 2, priming saliency of the pandemic increased support for travel bans from high (but not low) pandemic-risk countries. This prime did not increase general xenophobia. These results are consistent with threat-specific perspectives of outgroup avoidance, and provide an ecologically-valid test of the implications of perceived disease threat for policy-related attitudes and decision-making.

鉴于传染病在人类历史上构成的持续威胁，人们拥有一套复杂的认知和行为策略，旨在减少对疾病媒介的暴露。先前的研究表明，其中一种策略是避免不熟悉的外群成员。因此，我们在三项预先注册的研究（N = 764）在大流行开始时在美国和新加坡进行。感知传染性较高的美国人更支持旅行禁令，而细菌厌恶程度较高的新加坡人则更支持旅行禁令。在研究 2 中，大流行的显着性增加了对高（但不是低）大流行风险国家的旅行禁令的支持。这个总理并没有增加普遍的仇外心理。这些结果与外群体回避的特定威胁观点一致，并为感知疾病威胁对政策相关态度和决策的影响提供了生态有效的测试。