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Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines

OBJECTIVE: Risk assessment and response is important for understanding human behavior. The divisive context surrounding the coronavirus pandemic inspires our exploration of risk perceptions and the polarization of mitigation practices (i.e., the degree to which the behaviors of people on the politic...

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Autores principales: Block, Ray, Burnham, Michael, Kahn, Kayla, Peng, Rachel, Seeman, Jeremy, Seto, Christopher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9161674/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35690035
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115091
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author Block, Ray
Burnham, Michael
Kahn, Kayla
Peng, Rachel
Seeman, Jeremy
Seto, Christopher
author_facet Block, Ray
Burnham, Michael
Kahn, Kayla
Peng, Rachel
Seeman, Jeremy
Seto, Christopher
author_sort Block, Ray
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Risk assessment and response is important for understanding human behavior. The divisive context surrounding the coronavirus pandemic inspires our exploration of risk perceptions and the polarization of mitigation practices (i.e., the degree to which the behaviors of people on the political “Left” diverge from those on the “Right”). Specifically, we investigate the extent to which the political polarization of willingness to comply with mitigation behaviors changes with risk perceptions. METHOD: Analyses use data from two sources: an original dataset of Twitter posts and a nationally-representative survey. In the Twitter data, negative binomial regression models are used to predict mitigation intent measured using tweet counts. In the survey data, logit models predict self-reported mitigation behavior (vaccination, masking, and social distancing). RESULTS: Findings converged across both datasets, supporting the idea that the links between political orientation and willingness to follow mitigation guidelines depend on perceived risk. People on the Left are more inclined than their Right-oriented colleagues to follow guidelines, but this polarization tends to decrease as the perceived risk of COVID-19 intensifies. Additionally, we find evidence that exposure to COVID-19 infections sends ambiguous signals about the risk of the virus while COVID-19 related deaths have a more consistent impact on mitigation behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: Pandemic-related risks can create opportunities for perceived “common ground,” between the political “Right” and “Left.” Risk perceptions and politics interact in their links to intended COVID-19 mitigation behavior (as measured both on Twitter and in a national survey). Our results invite a more complex interpretation of political polarization than those stemming from simplistic analyses of partisanship and ideology.
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spelling pubmed-91616742022-06-02 Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines Block, Ray Burnham, Michael Kahn, Kayla Peng, Rachel Seeman, Jeremy Seto, Christopher Soc Sci Med Article OBJECTIVE: Risk assessment and response is important for understanding human behavior. The divisive context surrounding the coronavirus pandemic inspires our exploration of risk perceptions and the polarization of mitigation practices (i.e., the degree to which the behaviors of people on the political “Left” diverge from those on the “Right”). Specifically, we investigate the extent to which the political polarization of willingness to comply with mitigation behaviors changes with risk perceptions. METHOD: Analyses use data from two sources: an original dataset of Twitter posts and a nationally-representative survey. In the Twitter data, negative binomial regression models are used to predict mitigation intent measured using tweet counts. In the survey data, logit models predict self-reported mitigation behavior (vaccination, masking, and social distancing). RESULTS: Findings converged across both datasets, supporting the idea that the links between political orientation and willingness to follow mitigation guidelines depend on perceived risk. People on the Left are more inclined than their Right-oriented colleagues to follow guidelines, but this polarization tends to decrease as the perceived risk of COVID-19 intensifies. Additionally, we find evidence that exposure to COVID-19 infections sends ambiguous signals about the risk of the virus while COVID-19 related deaths have a more consistent impact on mitigation behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: Pandemic-related risks can create opportunities for perceived “common ground,” between the political “Right” and “Left.” Risk perceptions and politics interact in their links to intended COVID-19 mitigation behavior (as measured both on Twitter and in a national survey). Our results invite a more complex interpretation of political polarization than those stemming from simplistic analyses of partisanship and ideology. Elsevier Ltd. 2022-07 2022-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9161674/ /pubmed/35690035 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115091 Text en © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Block, Ray
Burnham, Michael
Kahn, Kayla
Peng, Rachel
Seeman, Jeremy
Seto, Christopher
Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines
title Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines
title_full Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines
title_fullStr Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines
title_full_unstemmed Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines
title_short Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines
title_sort perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow covid-19 mitigation guidelines
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9161674/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35690035
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115091
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