Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study investigated whether misalignment between an individual and their community in partisan identity predicted psychological and behavioral distancing from local COVID-19 norms. A nationally representative sample of Republicans and Democrats provided longitudinal data in April (N = 3,492) and June 2020 (N = 2,649). Democrats in Republican communities reported especially heightened better-than-average estimates, perceiving themselves as more adherent to and approving of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI; e.g., mask wearing) than their community. Democrats’better-than-average estimates reflected high approval and behavior in Republican communities and substantial norm underestimation. Republicans in Democratic communities did not evidence worse-than-average estimates. In longitudinal models, injunctive norms only predicted NPI behavior when individual and community partisan identity were aligned. The strong personal approval-behavior association did not depend on misalignment; there were no effects of descriptive norms. Normative messages may have limited efficacy for a sizable subpopulation in politically polarized contexts, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords

descriptive norms injunctive norms politics person–environment fit COVID-19 pandemic

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adolph

Amano

Bang-Jensen

Fullman

Wilkerson

(2021). Pandemic politics: Timing state-level social distancing responses to COVID-19. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 46(2), 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-8802162

Aiken

L. S.

West

S. G.

(1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. SAGE.

Alicke

M. D.

Govorun

(2005). The better-than-average effect. In Alicke

M. D.

Dunning

Krueger

(Eds.), The self in social judgment (pp. 85–106). Psychology Press.

Allcott

Boxell

Conway

Gentzkow

Thaler

Yang

(2020). Polarization and public health: Partisan differences in social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. Journal of Public Economics, 191, 104254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104254

Bird

Ritter

(2020). Is the media creating division on COVID-19 health practices? Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/312749/media-creating-division-covid-health-practices.aspx

Blanton

Stuart

A. E.

Van den Eijnden

R. J.

(2001). An introduction to deviance-regulation theory: The effect of behavioral norms on message framing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(7), 848–858.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, April 3). How to make your own face covering. https://youtu.be/tP1xyqvJgf4

Cialdini

R. B.

Jacobson

R. P.

(2021). Influences of social norms on climate change-related behaviors. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 42, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.01.005

Cox

M. J.

DiBello

A. M.

Meisel

M. K.

Ott

M. Q.

Kenney

S. R.

Clark

M. A.

Barnett

N. P.

(2019). Do misperceptions of peer drinking influence personal drinking behavior? Results from a complete social network of first-year college students. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 33(3), 297–303.

10.

Del Boca

F. K.

Darkes

. (2003). The validity of self-reports of alcohol consumption: State of the science and challenges for research. Addiction, 98, 1–12.

11.

Ebert

Gebauer

J. E.

Talman

J. R.

Rentfrow

P. J.

(2020). Religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts: A gravestone analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(1), 1–6.

12.

Ehret

P. J.

Van Boven

Sherman

D. K.

(2018). Partisan barriers to bipartisanship: Understanding climate policy polarization. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(3), 308–318.

13.

Fetzer

T. R.

Witte

Hensel

Jachimowicz

Haushofer

Ivchenko

Caria

Reutskaja

Roth

C. P.

Fiorin

(2020). Global behaviors and perceptions at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (0898-2937). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27082/w27082.pdf

14.

Finkel

E. J.

Bail

C. A.

Cikara

Ditto

P. H.

Iyengar

Klar

Mason

McGrath

M. C.

Nyhan

Rand

D. G.

(2020). Political sectarianism in America. Science, 370(6516), 533–536.

15.

Funk

Tyson

(2021). Growing share of Americans say they plan to get a COVID—19 vaccine—or already have. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2021/03/PS_2021.03.05_covid-19-vaccines_REPORT.pdf

16.

Göckeritz

Schultz

P. W.

Rendón

Cialdini

R. B.

Goldstein

N. J.

Griskevicius

(2010). Descriptive normative beliefs and conservation behavior: The moderating roles of personal involvement and injunctive normative beliefs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(3), 514–523.

17.

Goldberg

Gustafson

Maibach

van der Linden

Ballew

M. T.

Bergquist

Kotcher

Marlon

J. R.

Rosenthal

Leiserowitz

(2020). Social norms motivate COVID-19 preventive behaviors [Unpublished manuscript]. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Yale University. https://psyarxiv.com/9whp4/download?format=pdf

18.

Götz

F. M.

Gosling

S. D.

Rentfrow

P. J.

(2022). Small effects: The indispensable foundation for a cumulative psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 205–215. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620984483

19.

Green

Palmquist

Schickler

(2002). Partisan hearts and minds: Political parties and the social identities of voters. Yale University Press.

20.

Jacobson

R. P.

Mortensen

C. R.

Cialdini

R. B.

(2011). Bodies obliged and unbound: Differentiated response tendencies for injunctive and descriptive social norms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 433–448.

21.

Jokela

Bleidorn

Lamb

M. E.

Gosling

S. D.

Rentfrow

P. J.

(2015). Geographically varying associations between personality and life satisfaction in the London metropolitan area. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(3), 725–730.

22.

Kaikati

A. M.

Torelli

C. J.

Winterich

K. P.

Rodas

M. A.

(2017). Conforming conservatives: How salient social identities can increase donations. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 27(4), 422–434.

23.

Kim

J. K.

Michael Brick

Fuller

W. A.

Kalton

(2006). On the bias of the multiple-imputation variance estimator in survey sampling. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B, 68(3), 509–521.

24.

Kruger

(1999). Lake Wobegon be gone! The “below-average effect” and the egocentric nature of comparative ability judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 221–232.

25.

Lai

M. H.

Kwok

O-m.

(2015). Examining the rule of thumb of not using multilevel modeling: The “design effect smaller than two” rule. The Journal of Experimental Education, 83(3), 423–438.

26.

Larsen

Nyrup

Petersen

M. B.

(2020). Do survey estimates of the public’s compliance with COVID-19 regulations suffer from social desirability bias? Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 3(2), 1–9.

27.

Levendusky

M. S.

Malhotra

(2015). (Mis)perceptions of partisan polarization in the American public. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 378–391. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfv045

28.

Lewis

M. A.

Neighbors

(2006). Social norms approaches using descriptive drinking norms education: A review of the research on personalized normative feedback. Journal of American College Health, 54(4), 213–218.

29.

Missouri Census Data Center. (2022). ZIP code lookup. https://mcdc.missouri.edu/applications/zipcodes

30.

Moore

D. A.

Small

D. A.

(2007). Error and bias in comparative judgment: On being both better and worse than we think we are. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 972–989.

31.

Moore

Hill

E. M.

Tildesley

M. J.

Dyson

Keeling

M. J.

(2021). Vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID-19: A mathematical modelling study. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 21(6), 793–802. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00143-2

32.

New York Times. (2020). Coronavirus (Covid-19) data in the United States. https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data

33.

Nolan

J. M.

Schultz

P. W.

Cialdini

R. B.

Goldstein

N. J.

Griskevicius

(2008). Normative social influence is underdetected. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(7), 913–923.

34.

Pew Research Center. (2020). As economic concerns recede, environmental protection rises on the public’s policy agenda. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/02/13/as-economic-concerns-recede-environmental-protection-rises-on-the-publics-policy-agenda/

35.

Pew Research Center. (2021). Economy and COVID-19 top the public’s policy agenda for 2021: Sharp partisan gaps on addressing race, global climate change. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/01/28/economy-and-covid-19-top-the-publics-policy-agenda-for-2021/

36.

Pew Research Center. (2022). The changing political geography of COVID-19 over the last two years. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/03/03/the-changing-political-geography-of-covid-19-over-the-last-two-years/

37.

Prestwich

Kellar

Conner

Lawton

Gardner

Turgut

(2016). Does changing social influence engender changes in alcohol intake? A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 84(10), 845–860.

38.

Raghunathan

T. E.

(2004). What do we do with missing data? Some options for analysis of incomplete data. Annual Review of Public Health, 25, 99–117.

39.

Seaman

S. R.

White

I. R.

(2013). Review of inverse probability weighting for dealing with missing data. Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 22(3), 278–295.

40.

Sheeran

Klein

Rothman

A. J.

(2017). Health behavior change: Moving from observation to intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 68(1), 573–600.

41.

Sugerman

D. E.

Barskey

A. E.

Delea

M. G.

Ortega-Sanchez

I. R.

Ralston

K. J.

Rota

P. A.

Waters-Montijo

LeBaron

C. W.

(2010). Measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated population, San Diego, 2008: Role of the intentionally undervaccinated. Pediatrics, 125(4), 747–755. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2009-1653

42.

Tang

M. Y.

Rhodes

Powell

McGowan

Howarth

Brown

Cotterill

(2021). How effective are social norms interventions in changing the clinical behaviours of healthcare workers? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Implementation Science, 16(1), Article 8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-020-01072-1

43.

Tausanovitch

Warshaw

(2013). Measuring constituent policy preferences in congress, state legislatures, and cities. The Journal of Politics, 75(2), 330–342.

44.

Tausanovitch

Warshaw

(2016). County-level public preference estimates (2016 release). https://americanideologyproject.com/estimates/county_TW_ideology_estimates.csv

45.

Terry

D. J.

Hogg

M. A.

(1996). Group norms and the attitude-behavior relationship: A role for group identification. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(8), 776–793.

46.

Turner

J. C.

Hogg

M. A.

Oakes

P. J.

Reicher

S. D.

Wetherell

M. S.

(1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Basil Blackwell.

47.

United States Census Bureau. (2020). County population totals: 2010-2019. https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2010s-counties-total.html

48.

Van Bavel

J. J.

Baicker

Boggio

P. S.

Capraro

Cichocka

Cikara

Crockett

M. J.

Crum

A. J.

Douglas

K. M.

Druckman

J. N

. (2020). Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 460–471.

49.

Westwood

S. J.

Iyengar

Walgrave

Leonisio

Miller

Strijbis

(2018). The tie that divides: Cross-national evidence of the primacy of partyism. European Journal of Political Research, 57(2), 333–354. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12228

50.

The White House. (2020, March 16). The President’s coronavirus guidelines for America: 15 days to slow the spread. https://www.justice.gov/doj/page/file/1258511/download

51.

J. D.

Huber

G. A.

(2021). Partisan differences in social distancing may originate in norms and beliefs: Results from novel data. Social Science Quarterly, 102(5), 2251–2265. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12947

52.

Zell

Strickhouser

J. E.

Sedikides

Alicke

M. D.

(2020). The better-than-average effect in comparative self-evaluation: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146(2), 118–149.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.24 MB

Individual–Community Misalignment in Partisan Identity Predicts Distancing From Norms During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material