Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Center for Social and Cultural Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2020 Jul;59(3):594-606. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12395. Epub 2020 Jun 30.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, societies face the formidable challenge of developing sustainable forms of sociability-cumsocial-distancing - enduring social life while containing the virus and preventing new outbreaks. Accordant public policies often balance between retributive (punishment-based) and assistance (solidarity-based) measures to foster responsible behaviour. Yet, the uncontrolled spreading of the disease has divided public opinion about which measures are best suited, and it has made salient group disparities in behaviour, potentially straining intergroup relations, elevating heated emotions, and undercutting coordinated international responses. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, British citizens (N = 377) read about national in-group or outgroup members (categorical differentiation), who were either conforming to or deviating from the corona regulations (normative differentiation). Participants then reported moral emotions towards the target national group and indicated support for public policies. In general, support for assistance policies outweighed support for retributive measures. Second, however, norm deviation was associated with less positive and more negative moral emotions, the latter category further relating to more punitiveness and less assistance support. Finally, respondents who read about norm-violating outgroup members especially reported support for retributive measures, indicating that people might use norm deviation to justify outgroup derogation. We discuss implications for policymakers and formulate future research avenues.
针对 COVID-19 大流行，社会面临着开发可持续社交形式的艰巨挑战——在遏制病毒和防止新疫情爆发的同时维持社会生活。相应的公共政策通常在报应性（基于惩罚）和援助性（基于团结）措施之间取得平衡，以促进负责任的行为。然而，疾病的失控传播导致公众对哪些措施最有效产生分歧，这突显了行为方面的群体差异，可能会使群体间关系紧张，加剧激烈的情绪，并破坏协调一致的国际反应。在一项 2×2 被试间实验中，英国公民（N=377）阅读了关于本国群体或外群体成员的信息（分类区分），这些成员要么遵守或违反了新冠规定（规范区分）。然后，参与者报告了对目标国家群体的道德情感，并表示对公共政策的支持。总的来说，对援助政策的支持超过了对惩罚性措施的支持。然而，其次，规范偏离与较少的积极和更多的消极道德情感相关，后者与更多的惩罚性和更少的援助支持相关。最后，阅读违反规范的外群体成员信息的受访者尤其表示支持惩罚性措施，表明人们可能会利用规范偏离来为对外群体的诋毁辩护。我们讨论了对政策制定者的影响，并制定了未来的研究途径。
