Does an individual’s risk profile predict their social distancing and mask wearing in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic? Common sense and some health behavior theories suggest that as a perceived threat increases, an individual should be more likely to take preventive measures. We explore this hypothesis using survey responses collected from 1114 U.S. adults during April and October 2020, and find that neither perceived nor actual risk predicted these preventive behaviors. Instead, being an essential worker, partisanship, and believing compliance was important were more reliable predictors. These results provide guidance for better pandemic response policies and challenge models of health behavior.

个人的风险状况是否可以预测他们在 COVID-19 大流行期间在美国的社交距离和戴口罩？常识和一些健康行为理论表明，随着感知威胁的增加，个人应该更有可能采取预防措施。我们使用在 2020 年 4 月和 2020 年 10 月从 1114 名美国成年人收集的调查回复来探索这一假设，并发现感知风险和实际风险都不能预测这些预防行为。相反，作为一名重要的工作人员、党派之争和相信合规很重要是更可靠的预测因素。这些结果为更好的大流行应对政策和健康行为挑战模型提供了指导。