Chen Kaiyuan, Zhang Jinghui, Ao Xiang, Ramdass Jeff
Department of Psychology Claremont Graduate University Claremont California USA.
J Appl Soc Psychol. 2022 Jun;52(6):414-428. doi: 10.1111/jasp.12868. Epub 2022 Mar 3.
In dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, government officials often encounter two concurrent concerns: they have to enforce necessary public health and safety measures to manage COVID-19. Meanwhile, they also have to mitigate conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19. To shed light on these issues, we conducted two studies to investigate national identity certainty (i.e., the extent to which people are certain about their national identity) as a predictor of (a) support for restrictive measures to curtail COVID-19 and (b) conspiracy beliefs about an outgroup as the culprit of COVID-19. Study 1 was a three-week longitudinal study ( = 301) where we investigated the relationships both on a between-person level (differences between individuals) and on a within-person level (week-by-week fluctuations of the same individual). We found that individual differences in national identity certainty predicted increased support for restrictive measures and increased outgroup conspiracy beliefs. These relationships emerged, even when we controlled for national identity positivity, that is, the extent to which people see their national identity in positive light. In Study 2 ( = 316), we used a cross-sectional correlational design and replicated the findings of Study 1. Moreover, we found that the relationships were explained by distinct threat perceptions: realistic threat explained the increased support for restrictive measures, whereas symbolic threat explained the increased outgroup conspiracy beliefs. Overall, our findings suggest that support for restrictive measures and outgroup conspiracy beliefs can be seen as attempts of people high in national identity certainty to address the distinct threats of COVID-19.
在应对新冠疫情时，政府官员常常面临两个同时存在的问题：他们必须实施必要的公共卫生和安全措施来应对新冠疫情。与此同时，他们还必须减少有关新冠疫情的阴谋论观念。为了阐明这些问题，我们开展了两项研究，以调查国家身份确定性（即人们对其国家身份的确定程度）作为以下方面的预测因素：（a）对限制措施以遏制新冠疫情的支持，以及（b）将一个外群体视为新冠疫情罪魁祸首的阴谋论观念。研究1是一项为期三周的纵向研究（N = 301），我们在个体间层面（个体之间的差异）和个体内层面（同一个体每周的波动）调查了这些关系。我们发现，国家身份确定性的个体差异预测了对限制措施的支持增加以及对外群体阴谋论观念的增加。即使我们控制了国家身份积极性，即人们从积极角度看待其国家身份的程度，这些关系依然存在。在研究2（N = 316）中，我们采用了横断面相关设计并重复了研究1的结果。此外，我们发现这些关系由不同的威胁认知所解释：现实威胁解释了对限制措施的支持增加，而象征性威胁解释了对外群体阴谋论观念的增加。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，对限制措施的支持和对外群体阴谋论观念可被视为国家身份确定性高的人应对新冠疫情不同威胁的尝试。
