Effects of Living Conditions, Political Orientation, and Empathy on Behaviors and Attitudes During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Study in the Brazilian Context

For a year now, the world has been facing the pandemic of COVID-19, which has affected many sectors of society in an unprecedented proportion. The main objective of this paper was to investigate whether there are relationships between empathy, prosocial behavior, and adherence to measures to fight COVID-19 in a sample of Brazilian participants. Results point to the influence of education, living conditions, political orientation, and empathy on the adoption of measures to contain the virus, and on personal impressions regarding the disease. Specifically, participants with more years of education, with better conditions of practice social distancing, and those who identified themselves as leftist or center-leftist were more favourable to adopting virus containment measures and to practicing physical distancing. Higher levels of empathy were also associated to more positive attitudes concerning those measures. It is argued that political polarization and divergences between discourses by scientists, health authorities, politicians, and the Brazilian rulers may be reinforcing the perception of division in society. This, in turn, inhibits the building of a collectivistic view concerning COVID-19, which would be crucial to cope with the pandemic. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43076-021-00130-x.