Ollerenshaw Trent
Department of Political Science, Duke University, 140 Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708 USA.
Polit Behav. 2022 Oct 14:1-24. doi: 10.1007/s11109-022-09828-9.
A large literature contends that conservatives differ from liberals in their dispositional sensitivity to threat and needs for social order and security. Thus, a puzzle emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when American conservatives, despite their purported threat sensitivity, responded to the pandemic in ways that evinced little concern toward the risks posed by COVID-19. Threat tolerant liberals present an equally interesting case, having fervently masked, isolated, and advocated for stringent public health restrictions when facing down COVID-19. Why did so many Americans adopt health behaviors and policy preferences at odds with their dispositional orientations toward threat and needs for security during the COVID-19 pandemic? In this paper, I analyze three national surveys to evaluate how psychological dispositions affected Americans' responses to COVID-19. I find that authoritarianism, a common measure of dispositional threat sensitivity and needs for security, conditionally affected Americans' responses to the pandemic. Directly, authoritarianism was associated with greater concern over COVID-19 and, in turn, increased willingness to engage in protective health behaviors, support restrictive public health measures, and support economic interventions amidst the pandemic-induced downturn. Indirectly, however, authoritarianism promoted identification with and cue-taking from right-wing elites who frequently downplayed the severity of COVID-19; attention to such rhetoric reduced politically engaged authoritarians' concern over COVID-19 and, in turn, their willingness to adopt protective health behaviors and support public health restrictions or economic interventionism. Attention to political discourse thus appears to have countervailed Americans' dispositional orientations toward threat and security during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09828-9.
大量文献认为，保守派与自由派在对威胁的性格敏感度以及对社会秩序和安全的需求方面存在差异。因此，在新冠疫情期间出现了一个谜题：尽管美国保守派据称对威胁敏感，但他们应对疫情的方式却几乎没有表现出对新冠病毒所带来风险的担忧。宽容威胁的自由派也呈现出一个同样有趣的情况，他们在面对新冠疫情时热切地戴口罩、自我隔离并倡导严格的公共卫生限制措施。为什么在新冠疫情期间，如此多的美国人采取的健康行为和政策偏好与他们对威胁的性格倾向以及对安全的需求不一致呢？在本文中，我分析了三项全国性调查，以评估心理性格如何影响美国人对新冠疫情的反应。我发现，威权主义作为一种衡量性格威胁敏感度和安全需求的常用指标，有条件地影响了美国人对疫情的反应。直接地说，威权主义与对新冠疫情的更大担忧相关，进而增加了在疫情引发的经济衰退期间参与保护性健康行为、支持限制性公共卫生措施以及支持经济干预的意愿。然而，间接地，威权主义促使人们认同右翼精英并效仿他们，而右翼精英经常淡化新冠疫情的严重性；关注此类言论降低了积极参与政治的威权主义者对新冠疫情的担忧，进而降低了他们采取保护性健康行为以及支持公共卫生限制或经济干预主义的意愿。因此，在新冠疫情期间，对政治话语的关注似乎抵消了美国人对威胁和安全的性格倾向。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s11109-022-09828-9获取的补充材料。
