Behaviours recommended for reducing transmission of COVID-19 – social distancing, wearing masks, and now, vaccination – are aimed at not only reducing one’s own risk, but risk to others. We posited that a collectivist mindset, versus individualistic, would facilitate intentions to engage in behaviours aimed at curtailing the spread of the virus when the awareness of mortality is activated. This hypothesis was informed by the terror management health model and tested in two studies. In each study, collective ‘we’ (vs. the individual ‘I’) was primed, in conjunction with mortality salience compared to a control condition. The results were generally consistent, with Study 1 showing that when collectivism, but not individualism, was primed, individuals responded to a COVID-19-based mortality reminder with a significant increase in health intentions, including social distancing and mask wearing. In Study 2, when mortality was salient, priming individualism led to reduced vaccination intention compared to collectivism. We discuss limitations to the research and conclude with the recommendation that COVID-19-based communications highlight the dangers of the virus in conjunction with a focus on the collective ‘we’ to best encourage optimal virus mitigation behaviour.

中文翻译：

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我们可以共同减缓 COVID-19 的传播：启动集体主义和死亡率显着性对病毒相关健康行为意图的相互作用


建议减少 COVID-19 传播的行为——保持社交距离、戴口罩以及现在的疫苗接种——不仅是为了降低自己的风险，也是为了降低他人的风险。我们假设，当死亡意识被激活时，集体主义心态，而不是个人主义心态，将有助于采取旨在遏制病毒传播的行为。这一假设是根据恐怖管理健康模型得出的，并在两项研究中得到了检验。在每项研究中，集体的“我们”（相对于个人的“我”）都处于启动状态，并与对照条件相比死亡率显着。结果总体一致，研究 1 显示，当集体主义而非个人主义被激发时，个人对基于 COVID-19 的死亡提醒的反应显着增加，健康意愿显着增加，包括保持社交距离和戴口罩。在研究 2 中，当死亡率显着时，与集体主义相比，启动个人主义会导致疫苗接种意愿降低。我们讨论了该研究的局限性，并得出结论，即基于 COVID-19 的通信强调了病毒的危险，同时关注集体“我们”，以最好地鼓励最佳的病毒缓解行为。