Working Memory Capacity Predicts Individual Differences in Social Distancing Compliance during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the U.S.

Noncompliance with social distancing during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic poses a great challenge to the public health system. These noncompliance behaviors partly reflect people’s concerns for the inherent costs of social distancing while discounting its public health benefits. We propose that this oversight may be associated with the limitation in one’s mental capacity to simultaneously retain multiple pieces of information in working memory (WM) for rational decision making that leads to social distancing compliance. We tested this hypothesis in 850 U.S. residents during the first 2 weeks following the presidential declaration of national emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that participants’ social distancing compliance at this initial stage could be predicted by individual differences in WM capacity, partly due to increased awareness of benefits over costs of social distancing among higher WM capacity individuals. Critically, the unique contribution of WM capacity to the individual differences in social distancing compliance could not be explained by other psychological and socioeconomic factors (e.g., moods, personality, education, and income levels). Furthermore, the critical role of WM capacity in social distancing compliance can be generalized to the compliance with another set of rules for social interactions, namely the fairness norm, in Western cultures. Collectively, our data reveal novel contributions of a core cognitive process underlying social distancing compliance during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting a potential cognitive venue for developing strategies to mitigate a public health crisis.