Responses to political partisans are shaped by a COVID-19-sensitive disease avoidance psychology: A longitudinal investigation of functional flexibility

Am Psychol. 2024 Mar 28. doi: 10.1037/amp0001318. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTHow do natural changes in disease avoidance motivation shape thoughts about and behaviors toward ingroup and outgroup members? During the COVID-19 pandemic, political party affiliation has been a strong predictor in the United States of COVID-19-related opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. Using a six-wave longitudinal panel survey of representative Americans (on Prolific, N = 1,124, from April 2020 to February 2021), we explored how naturally occurring changes across time in both risks of COVID-19 infection and people's disease avoidance motivation shaped thoughts about and behaviors toward Republicans and Democrats (e.g., perceived infection threat, feelings of disgust, desires to avoid). We found a significant effect of dispositional level of motivation, over and above powerful effects of in-party favoritism/out-party derogation: Participants with a dispositionally stronger motivation to avoid disease showed greater infection management responses, especially toward Republicans; this held even for Republican participants. More importantly, we also found a significant interactive effect of within-person variability and ecological infection risk: Participants who sensitively upregulated their motivation during the rapid spread of COVID-19 perceived greater infection threat by Republicans and felt less disgust toward and desire to avoid Democrats. This finding, too, held for Republican participants....
Source: The American Psychologist - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research