Cortes Barragan Rodolfo, Meltzoff Andrew N
Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 12;13:1052713. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1052713. eCollection 2022.
The acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic may have passed, but the pandemic remains a major worldwide health concern that demands continued vigilance. Are there individual differences that predict the motivation to continue to wear masks and to create physical distance in public? Previous research conducted early in the pandemic had suggested that a particular social identity--is one underlying factor that contributes to people's cooperation with health behavior guidelines. This highlights that the pandemic is not only an issue to be tackled with the tools of immunology and epidemiology. It also requires the tools from psychology-to measure the representations people have about themselves and others and how these representations drive values and decisions related to health. Here we report work on U.S. respondents that examined whether individuals' level of identification with all humanity predicts their prosocial health behaviors aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. In 3 convergent studies (total = 1,580), we find that identification with all humanity predicted the prosocial motivation to wear masks and to engage in physical distancing when in public without a mask. The results were obtained while controlling for a host of covariates, including demographics, educational attainment, and Big Five personality dimensions. We find that some people have a marked drive to care for the health of strangers, which is significantly linked to their concern for rather than being restricted to their care for their community or country. Discussion focuses on this social identification with humanity and its enduring, replicable role in predicting the motivation to engage in prosocial health behaviors. We note key implications for theories in social and developmental psychology as well as for research that may lead to practical applications for lessening the human toll of the current and future pandemics.
新冠疫情的急性期可能已经过去，但疫情仍是全球主要的健康问题，需要持续保持警惕。是否存在个体差异能预测人们在公共场所继续佩戴口罩和保持身体距离的动机？疫情早期进行的先前研究表明，一种特定的社会身份——是促使人们遵守健康行为准则的一个潜在因素。这凸显出疫情不仅是一个要用免疫学和流行病学工具来解决的问题。它还需要心理学工具——来衡量人们对自己和他人的认知，以及这些认知如何驱动与健康相关的价值观和决策。在此，我们报告了一项针对美国受访者的研究，该研究考察了个体对全人类的认同程度是否能预测他们旨在减轻新冠病毒传播的亲社会健康行为。在三项趋同研究（总计1580人）中，我们发现对全人类的认同能预测人们佩戴口罩以及在公共场所未戴口罩时保持身体距离的亲社会动机。这些结果是在控制了一系列协变量后得出的，这些协变量包括人口统计学特征、教育程度和大五人格维度。我们发现有些人有显著的动力去关心陌生人的健康，这与他们对全人类的关心密切相关，而不仅仅局限于对自己社区或国家的关心。讨论聚焦于这种对全人类的社会认同及其在预测亲社会健康行为动机方面的持久、可复制的作用。我们指出了这对社会和发展心理学理论以及可能导致实际应用以减轻当前和未来疫情对人类造成的损失的研究的关键影响。
