Department of Psychology, University of Bath, UK.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2020 Jul;59(3):653-662. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12399. Epub 2020 Jun 25.
COVID-19 mitigating practices such as 'hand-washing', 'social distancing', or 'social isolating' are constructed as 'moral imperatives', required to avert harm to oneself and others. Adherence to COVID-19 mitigating practices is presently high among the general public, and stringent lockdown measures supported by legal and policy intervention have facilitated this. In the coming months, however, as rules are being relaxed and individuals become less strict, and thus, the ambiguity in policy increases, the maintenance of recommended social distancing norms will rely on more informal social interactional processes. We argue that the moralization of these practices, twinned with relaxations of policy, may likely cause interactional tension between those individuals who do vs. those who do not uphold social distancing in the coming months: that is, derogation of those who adhere strictly to COVID-19 mitigating practices and group polarization between 'distancers' and 'non-distancers'. In this paper, we explore how and why these processes might come to pass, their impact on an overall societal response to COVID-19, and the need to factor such processes into decisions regarding how to lift restrictions.
COVID-19 缓解措施，如“洗手”、“保持社交距离”或“社交隔离”，被构建为“道德准则”，以避免对自己和他人造成伤害。目前，公众普遍高度遵守 COVID-19 缓解措施，而法律和政策干预支持的严格封锁措施促成了这一点。然而，在未来几个月，随着规则的放松和个人变得不那么严格，政策的模糊性增加，维持推荐的社交距离规范将依赖于更非正式的社会互动过程。我们认为，这些做法的道德化，加上政策的放松，可能会在未来几个月导致那些遵守与不遵守社交距离的人之间的互动紧张：也就是说，对那些严格遵守 COVID-19 缓解措施的人的诋毁，以及“保持距离者”和“不保持距离者”之间的群体极化。在本文中，我们探讨了这些过程是如何以及为什么会发生的，它们对 COVID-19 整体社会应对的影响，以及在决定如何解除限制时需要将这些过程纳入考虑的必要性。
