scholarly journals Social norms (not threat) mediate willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Pretus ◽  
Oscar Vilarroya
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Global Challenges ◽  
Identity Fusion ◽  
Willingness To Sacrifice ◽  
Global Threat ◽  
Post Disaster ◽  
Initial Peak

Identity fusion with the community has been previously found to mediate altruism in post-disaster settings. However, whether this altruistic response is specifically triggered by ingroup threat, or whether it can also be triggered by global threats remains unclear. We evaluated willingness to sacrifice in the context of the covid-19 pandemic across three surveys waves. Against expectations, participants fused with the nation (vs. non-fused) did not differentially respond to a national vs. global threat condition. Conversely, social norms decisively influenced willingness to sacrifice in this sample, with fused individuals with stronger norms about social distancing reporting the highest altruistic response during the first weeks of the pandemic. Longitudinally, after an initial peak in the altruistic response, deteriorating social norms mediated decreases in willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation (versus non-fused). Implications of these results for the development of interventions aimed to address global challenges are discussed.

scholarly journals Personality in a pandemic: Social norms moderate associations between personality and social distancing behaviors

2021 ◽  
Vol 177 ◽  
pp. 110828
Author(s):  
Steven G. Ludeke ◽  
Joseph A. Vitriol ◽  
Erik Gahner Larsen ◽  
Miriam Gensowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Distancing

scholarly journals Indemnifying precaution: economic insights for regulation of a highly infectious disease

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher T Robertson ◽  
K Aleks Schaefer ◽  
Daniel Scheitrum ◽  
Sergio Puig ◽  
Keith Joiner
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Moral Hazard ◽  
Risky Behaviors ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Legal Intervention ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Personal Risk ◽  
Personal Costs

Abstract Economic insights are powerful for understanding the challenge of managing a highly infectious disease, such as COVID-19, through behavioral precautions including social distancing. One problem is a form of moral hazard, which arises when some individuals face less personal risk of harm or bear greater personal costs of taking precautions. Without legal intervention, some individuals will see socially risky behaviors as personally less costly than socially beneficial behaviors, a balance that makes those beneficial behaviors unsustainable. For insights, we review health insurance moral hazard, agricultural infectious disease policy, and deterrence theory, but find that classic enforcement strategies of punishing noncompliant people are stymied. One mechanism is for policymakers to indemnify individuals for losses associated with taking those socially desirable behaviors to reduce the spread. We develop a coherent approach for doing so, based on conditional cash payments and precommitments by citizens, which may also be reinforced by social norms.

scholarly journals Social distancing in America: Understanding long-term adherence to COVID-19 mitigation recommendations

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0257945
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Reinders Folmer ◽  
Megan A. Brownlee ◽  
Adam D. Fine ◽  
Emmeke B. Kooistra ◽  
Malouke E. Kuiper ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Infectious Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Practical Capacity ◽  
Major Factors

A crucial question in the governance of infectious disease outbreaks is how to ensure that people continue to adhere to mitigation measures for the longer duration. The present paper examines this question by means of a set of cross-sectional studies conducted in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, in May, June, and July of 2020. Using stratified samples that mimic the demographic characteristics of the U.S. population, it seeks to understand to what extent Americans continued to adhere to social distancing measures in the period after the first lockdown ended. Moreover, it seeks to uncover which variables sustained (or undermined) adherence across this period. For this purpose, we examined a broad range of factors, relating to people’s (1) knowledge and understanding of the mitigation measures, (2) perceptions of their costs and benefits, (3) perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice, (4) personal factors, (5) social environment, and (6) practical circumstances. Our findings reveal that adherence was chiefly shaped by three major factors: respondents adhered more when they (a) had greater practical capacity to adhere, (b) morally agreed more with the measures, and (c) perceived the virus as a more severe health threat. Adherence was shaped to a lesser extent by impulsivity, knowledge of social distancing measures, opportunities for violating, personal costs, and descriptive social norms. The results also reveal, however, that adherence declined across this period, which was partly explained by changes in people’s moral alignment, threat perceptions, knowledge, and perceived social norms. These findings show that adherence originates from a broad range of factors that develop dynamically across time. Practically these insights help to improve pandemic governance, as well as contributing theoretically to the study of compliance and the way that rules come to shape behavior.

scholarly journals Coronavirus outbreaks including COVID-19 and impacts on medical education: a systematic review

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 130
Author(s):  
Kelly Kelly ◽  
Lie Rebecca Yen Hwei ◽  
Gilbert Sterling Octavius
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Clinical Skills ◽  
World Health ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
The World ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Global Threat

Since the beginning of 2020, the world has been affected by the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. The virus’ infectious nature pushed all sectors to implement social distancing measures in an effort to limit its transmission, including the education sector. We searched PubMed and Science Direct on June 12th and found 24 papers that are relevant to our review. After the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 is a global threat, various countries took a variety of measures to limit the disease spread such as social distancing, self-quarantine, and closing public facilities that hold large gatherings, including universities and schools. Hospitals started to prioritize services for COVID-19 cases. Medical education programs are also affected by this disease, but not continuing in-person classes outweighs any benefit from traditional teaching methods. The previous Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) pandemics have shown ways to shift medical education to online platforms. In the current pandemic, online meetings are being used to hold lectures, classes, laboratory practices, and clinical skills classes. For clerkship students, online platforms might not be feasible because this eliminates patient-doctor relationships, but it appears for now to be the only option. Some institutions have involved medical students in the frontlines altogether. We encourage all parties to constantly evaluate, review, and improve the efforts of continuing medical education, especially during this pandemic. Further research is needed to evaluate students’ performance after adopting e-learning and to discover the best methods in medical education in general and clerkship education in particular.

scholarly journals How laws affect the perception of norms: Empirical evidence from the lockdown

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0256624
Author(s):  
Roberto Galbiati ◽  
Emeric Henry ◽  
Nicolas Jacquemet ◽  
Max Lobeck
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Perceived Norms ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Uk

Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of social norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show that this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel and that the intervention made perceptions of social norms converge to the actual prevalent norm.

scholarly journals Let's (Not) Get Together!: The Role of Social Norms in Social Distancing during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Déborah Martínez ◽  
Cristina Parilli ◽  
Carlos Scartascini ◽  
Alberto Simpser
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Fictional Character ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Predicted Probability ◽  
Communication Campaigns

While effective preventive measures against COVID-19 are now widely known, many individuals fail to adopt them. This paper provides experimental evidence about one potentially important driver of compliance with social distancing: social norms. We asked each of 23,000 survey respondents in Mexico to predict how a fictional person would behave when faced with the choice about whether or not to attend a friend's birthday gathering. Every respondent was randomly assigned to one of four social norms conditions. Expecting that other people would attend the gathering and/or believing that other people approved of attending the gathering both increased the predicted probability that the fictional character would attend the gathering by 25% in comparison with a scenario where other people were not expected to attend nor to approve of attending. Our results speak to the potential effects of communication campaigns and media coverage of, compliance with, and normative views about COVID-19 preventive measures. They also suggest that policies aimed at modifying social norms or making existing ones salient could impact compliance.

The Dynamics of Risk

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise K. Comfort
Keyword(s):  
Complex Adaptive Systems ◽  
Seismic Risk ◽  
Adaptive Systems ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Shared Awareness ◽  
Response And Recovery ◽  
Global Threat ◽  
Post Disaster

Earthquakes are a huge global threat. In thirty-six countries, severe seismic risks threaten populations and their increasingly interdependent systems of transportation, communication, energy, and finance. This book provides an examination of how twelve communities in nine countries responded to destructive earthquakes between 1999 and 2015. And many of the book's lessons can also be applied to other large-scale risks. The book sets the global problem of seismic risk in the framework of complex adaptive systems to explore how the consequences of such events ripple across jurisdictions, communities, and organizations in complex societies, triggering unexpected alliances but also exposing social, economic, and legal gaps. It assesses how the networks of organizations involved in response and recovery adapted and acted collectively after the twelve earthquakes it examines. It describes how advances in information technology enabled some communities to anticipate seismic risk better and to manage response and recovery operations more effectively, decreasing losses. Finally, the book shows why investing substantively in global information infrastructure would create shared awareness of seismic risk and make post-disaster relief more effective and less expensive. The result is a landmark study of how to improve the way we prepare for and respond to earthquakes and other disasters in our ever-more-complex world.

scholarly journals Covid-19 Social Distancing Interventions by State Mandate and their Correlation to Mortality in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean McCafferty ◽  
Sean Ashley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Population Density ◽  
Total Mortality ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Daily Mortality ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Initial Peak

Background: Evaluate the correlation between U.S. state mandated social interventions and Covid-19 mortality using a retrospective analysis of Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) data. Methods: Twenty-seven (27) states in the United States were selected on June 17, 2020 from IHME data which had clearly defined and dated establishment of statewide mandates for social distancing measures to include: School closures, Prohibition on mass gatherings, business closures, stay at home orders, severe travel restrictions, and closure of non-essential businesses. The state Covid-19 mortality prevalence was defined as total normalized deaths to the peak daily mortality rate. The state mortality prevalence was correlated to the total number of mandates-days from their date of establishment to the peak daily mortality date. The slope of the maximum daily mortality rate was also correlated to mandate-days. Results: The standardized mortality per state to the initial peak mortality rate did not demonstrate a discernable correlation to the total mandate days (R2 = 0.000006, p= 0.995). The standardized peak mortality rate per state suggested a slight correlation to the total mandate days (R2 = 0.053,p=0.246), but was not statistically significant. There was a significant correlation between standardized mortality and state population density (R2 = 0.524,p=0.00002). Conclusions: The analysis appears to suggest no mandate effective reduction in Covid-19 mortality nor a reduction in Covid-19 mortality rate to its defined initial peak when interpreting the mean-effect of the mandates as present in the data. A strong correlation to population density suggests human interaction frequency does affect the total mortality and maximum mortality rate.

scholarly journals Social Comparisons and Cooperation During COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhei Kitamura ◽  
Katsunori Yamada
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Factorial Design ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Policy Intervention ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Familiar Face ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time

We conducted a survey experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic to examine the effects of information treatments on individuals' cooperation with social distancing measures. Using a 2 x 2 factorial design, we examined the effects of messages that contained information about the length of time individuals spend outside the home compared with the social norms. We also examined the effects of the identity of the messenger by comparing information delivered by a powerful messenger who rarely speaks up publicly with that delivered by a familiar face. Based on a sample of about 3,000 respondents, we find that our subjects cooperated with social distancing measures more when they understood they had spent a relatively long time outside the home in the previous week. We also find no backfiring effects among subjects who stayed home longer than the social norms, and little evidence that a powerful messenger increases the persuasiveness of the message. Our results suggest that a feasible and repeatable policy intervention to induce citizens to cooperate with social distancing measures is simply informing them about society's statistics and letting them make comparisons with the social norms.

scholarly journals Compliance with COVID-19 Mitigation Measures in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin van Rooij ◽  
Anne Leonore de Bruijn ◽  
Christopher Reinders Folmer ◽  
Emmeke Barbara Kooistra ◽  
Malouke Esra Kuiper ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Intrinsic Motivations ◽  
Fundamental Shift

The COVID-19 mitigation measures require a fundamental shift in human behavior. The present study assesses what factors influence Americans to comply with the stay at home and social distancing measures. It analyzes data from an online survey, conducted on April 3, 2020, of 570 participants from 35 states that have adopted such measures. The results show that while perceptual deterrence was not associated with compliance, people actually comply less when they fear the authorities. Further, two broad processes promote compliance. First, compliance depended on people’s capacity to obey the rules, opportunity to break the rules, and self-control. As such, compliance results from their own personal abilities and the context in which they live. Second, compliance depended on people’s intrinsic motivations, including substantive moral support and social norms. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for ensuring compliance to effectively mitigate the virus.

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