ABSTRACT

To mitigate the impacts and spread of COVID-19, drastic mitigative actions are demanded from individuals worldwide, including social distancing, health behaviors, and self-quarantining. A key question is what motivates individuals to take and support such actions. Early in the COVID-19 crisis, we hypothesized and found in two studies (in the Netherlands and United States) that stronger worries about potential consequences of COVID-19 for oneself and close others (i.e., family and friends), as well as more “distant” others (e.g., citizens in general, vulnerable populations), are associated with stronger engagement in actions to mitigate COVID-19. In line with reasoning on norm activation, we found that these associations were partly mediated by personal norms, reflecting individuals’ feelings of being morally compelled and personally responsible to take mitigative actions. Importantly, individuals generally reported to worry more about consequences of COVID-19 for distant others than for themselves, and worries about distant others were more strongly related to mitigative actions than worries about oneself and close others. Our outcomes offer key novel insights to the health domain, highlighting the potential relevance of worrying about distant others and personal norms in motivating actions to mitigate global health crises.

摘要

为了减轻 COVID-19 的影响和传播，世界各地的个人都需要采取严厉的缓解措施，包括保持社交距离、健康行为和自我隔离。一个关键问题是什么促使个人采取和支持此类行动。在 COVID-19 危机初期，我们假设并在两项研究（在荷兰和美国）中发现，人们更担心 COVID-19 对自己和亲密他人（即家人和朋友）以及更多人的潜在后果“远方”的其他人（例如，一般公民、弱势群体）与更积极地参与缓解 COVID-19 的行动有关。根据对规范激活的推理，我们发现这些关联部分是由个人规范调节的，反映个人在道德上被迫和个人负责采取缓解行动的感受。重要的是，个人普遍报告说他们更担心 COVID-19 对远方他人的影响，而不是他们自己，而且与对自己和亲近他人的担忧相比，对远方他人的担忧与缓解行动的关系更为密切。我们的成果为健康领域提供了重要的新颖见解，强调了担心远方的他人和个人规范在激励采取行动缓解全球健康危机方面的潜在相关性。