Morality in the Pandemic
Discover more from The Social Identity & Morality Lab
Morality in the Pandemic
Our latest research on the role of morality in public health behaviors during Pandemic and more.
It feels like the entire pandemic has provided a series of moral dilemmas: Do I stock up on scarce supplies or leave some for other people? Should I cancel a trip to a see a friend or risk getting infected? Is it OK to ask that lady on the plane to wear a mask? What all these dilemmas entail is that belief that combatting the pandemic is a social problem that require sacrifices and behavioral changes from each individual.
But what factors influence people's attitudes and behavior towards public policies aimed at preventing the spread of pandemics, such as wearing masks and social distancing? And why do some individuals ignore them? We have been trying to answer these questions by running several large international studies during the pandemic.
One of our key findings is that various morality dispositions explain why some people engage in the collective actions necessary to fight the pandemic while others do not. Morality is associated with both support for public health measures and actual behavior during the pandemic. Specifically, three aspects of morality predict support for public health measures to fight the pandemic: moral identity, morality-as-cooperation, and moral circles.
Our paper was recently accepted for publication in the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations (and led by our collaborator Paulo Boggio).
As you can see from the maps below, people who scored high on all of these measures of morality were more likely to limit contact, improve their hygiene, and support policy aimed at minimizing the spread of COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic. Strikingly, we found this pattern in almost every country we studied around the globe! We describe these personality measures below so you can see how you’d score on them…
Moral identity: Would you feel good about yourself if you possessed the characteristics of caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hardworking, honest, and kind? This is a measure of moral identity, and if your answer was "yes, it would make me feel good to be a person who has these characteristics", then the probability of you supporting public policies to combat the pandemic is higher. We found that moral identity was the strongest predictor of support for public health measures during the pandemic.
Morality as Cooperation: Reflect on how your sense of right and wrong may be shaped by an individual's actions towards their family, efforts to foster unity within a community, or commitment to fulfilling promises. If you realize your sense of right and wrong are shaped by it, then you understand morality as cooperation. We found that higher scores on morality-as-cooperation are associated with support measures to combat the pandemic. The fight against the pandemic demands a collective perspective, and some virtues related to morality-as-cooperation involve care, loyalty, solidarity, and trust.
Moral circle: And for which people are you concerned about right and wrong done toward them? Are you worried only about your immediate family? Or your concern is extended to your friends, neighbors, all humanity or even all things in existence? This is a measure called moral circle and it reflects the extend of your concern. We found that the larger the moral circle of an individual, the greater the support for measures to combat the new coronavirus which means that promoting a more universalist perspective may positively tackle the pandemic.
Finally, these three aspects of morality and the personal values of benevolence and universalism were correlated with actual behavior, as measured by the COVID-19 Google mobility report (which tracks how much people reduced their movement compared to the year before the pandemic). Higher morality scores are correlated with a higher reduction in community mobility.
In conclusion, individual variation in morality might help explain some of the striking variations in public reactions to the pandemic across individuals and nations. Our findings reveal the role of individuals’ moral values and beliefs not only in their interest in acting collectively but also in their actual behavior to fight the pandemic. Morality is associated with both support for public health measures and actual behavior during the pandemic. Actions to combat the pandemic require sacrifices and behavioral changes from each individual, resulting in better collective outcomes. Social changes and actions might be seen as non-zero-sum in which everyone wins with cooperation.
Our paper will be forthcoming: Boggio, P., Capraro, V., Alfano, M., Cichocka, A., Van Bavel, J., Parnamets, P., Sjastad, H., Rego, G., Nezlek, J., Sampaio, W., & Azevedo, F. (in press). A time for moral actions: Moral Identity, Morality-as-Cooperation and Moral Circles predict support of collective action to fight the Covid-19 pandemic in an international sample. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.
New Papers
In our recently published paper, Andrea Pereira, Elizabeth Harris and Jay examined how partisan identity affects people's beliefs and dissemination of true and false news. They conducted three experiments with American adults and found that individuals are more likely to believe and share news stories that align with their partisan identity, even if they are false. Politically engaged individuals were more susceptible to this effect. Read the paper here to learn more about the importance of addressing partisan identity in promoting accurate information and combating misinformation.
We also have a new commentary in press at Behavioral and Brain Sciences written by Lina Koppel, Claire Robertson, Kimberly Doell, Ali Javeed, Jesper Rasmussen, Steve Rathje, Madalina Vlasceanu and Jay. Contrary to the belief that individual interventions undermine policy change, they argued that individual-level solutions can pave the way for system-level change, especially when they are integrated into an individual's social identity.
This goes against the idea that individual level change can undercut support the way for social change (known as a negative spillover effect). Instead, they highlighted evidence that social identity can drive positive spillover effects between individual interventions and systemic change. Read the preprint here!
Public Outreach
Recently, Dominic Packer and Jay interviewed Sander van der Linden on his new book, Foolproof. They talked about the key ideas presented in the book, writing experience, possible ways of applying ideas learned in the book and more. Read the interview here to get a preview of the “ultimate handbook for fighting back against the tsunami of misinformation that threatens to drown us in bullshit.”
More on the psychology of misinformation, do not miss Steve’s new TikTok video where he discussed pre-bunking as a way of fighting against misinformation while mixing drinks. Watch the full video here:
Steve also talked to PsyPost about his PNAS Nexus paper on Social media behavior is associated with vaccine hesitancy. Check out the full paper here if you haven’t and the PsyPost article as well!
SPSP this year
With SPSP finally returned in person, some of our lab members and affiliates presented their works at the conference (Steve, Claire, Diego, and Madalina all gave talks, while several other lab members got a shout-out—including Ali!)
while Jay enjoyed his time being “POMO”.
Exciting News
At his 13th year at NYU, Jay has now been promoted to full professor. Congratulations, Jay!
Our former research assistant, Sahar Hafezi, will be attending Virginia Tech for her PhD in Developmental Psychology. Congratulations, Sahar!
Finally, be sure to watch the 95th Annual Academy Awards on March 12th since you will likely be seeing our famous lab alumna, Anni Sternisko, walk the red carpet and cheer on Everything Everywhere All at Once (which is the front runner for the prestigious Best Picture Award and just cleaned up at the Screen Actors Guild Awards)!
In case you missed last month’s newsletter…
As always, if you have any photos, news, or research you’d like to have included in this newsletter, please reach out to the Lab Manager (nyu.vanbavel.lab@gmail.com) who writes our monthly newsletter. We encourage former lab members and collaborators to share exciting career updates or job opportunities—we’d love to hear what you’re up to and help sustain a flourishing lab community. Please also drop comments below about anything you like about the newsletter or would like us to add.
That’s all, folks—thanks for reading and we’ll see you next month!