Table 1.
Overview of brief reports in special section
| Brief report | Author(s) | Key conclusions | Practical recommendations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theme 1: The role of pre‐existing identities, norms, values, and worldviews in determining responses to the pandemic | |||
| 1. | Cruwys et al. (2020) | Existing approaches to modelling virus transmission inaccurately model human interaction. People who share social identities perceive each other as less risky and therefore undertake greater risk‐taking behaviour in in‐group interactions because they experience more trust and less disgust. | Mathematical models of transmission should weight interactions by psychological group membership (social identities), because group membership moderates perception of health risk and in turn affects health risk behaviour. Public health messaging should take into account the moderating role of shared social identities on compliance with physical distancing advice. When public health campaigns highlight the importance of physical distancing, the campaign should simultaneously aim to communicate that physical distance is an expression of in‐group care, and explain that this includes proximal social connections. |
| 2. | Van Assche et al. (2020) | Experimental evidence (N = 377) suggests that salience of outgroup non‐compliance with public health guidance increases negative moral emotions, and, in turn, support for retributive measures. | Making salient intergroup differences in compliance with public health advice could increase intergroup tensions, including discrimination. Therefore, governments and officials should avoid framing normative conduct along group boundaries. Instead, communications should be inclusive and aim to promote togetherness, collective resilience, and solidarity across group boundaries. |
| 3. | Courtney et al. (2020) | Drawing on the terror management health model (TMHM; Goldenberg & Arndt, 2008), Courtney et al. (2020) argue that distal defences to threats to health, involving deriving symbolic meaning from cultural frameworks, occur automatically to combat non‐conscious accessibility of death thoughts. This can increase intergroup bias if such bias is intrinsic to pre‐existing values and cultural frameworks. People's decisions about health behaviours depend upon the alignment of these behaviours with their values, cultural frameworks, and worldviews. |
Compliance with public health advice is most likely when a behaviour is perceived as easy, immediately actionable, and effective for reducing the threat. Communications should aim to resonate with worldviews that support collectivism and taking collective responsibility to increase compliance with public health advice. |
| 4. | Wolf et al. (2020) | There are likely to be higher levels of pro‐social behaviour, and of compliance with restrictions on movement, amongst people who are high in transcendence and conservation values. Evidence indicates that persuasive communication can be designed to take account of these values to maximize the likelihood that those who don't subscribe to them will engage in the appropriate behaviours. Perception of value similarity is also key. | Tailor communications to take values into account and ensure that value mis‐perception is corrected. For example, highlight high levels of compliance with restrictions rather than occasional non‐compliance. |
| Theme 2: The emergence of new groups and norms in reaction to the pandemic | |||
| 5. | Jolley and Paterson (2020) | A cross‐sectional survey (N = 601) provided evidence that belief in conspiracy theories is related to increases in anger, which in turn interacts with an individual's level of paranoia to predict increases in violent action intentions and justification of violence. | Interventions should target and teach paranoid individuals to respond to the anger they feel in response to conspiracy beliefs in non‐violent ways. |
| 6. | Maher et al. (2020) | Shared opinions about the pandemic can become the basis of social identities, and as such provide a psychological platform for compliance/ non‐compliance with public health advice. A 3‐wave longitudinal analysis (N = 253) of public health attitudes and a follow‐up survey (N = 217) showed that distinct opinion‐based groups formed and diverged over time, partially reflecting pre‐existing societal divides, and which predicted compliance with public health advice. | Public health messages should be tailored and targeted to groups who trust/do not trust science to maximize behavioural compliance and avoid intergroup polarization. |
| 7. | Prosser et al. (2020) | As lockdown measures are eased there is potential for new identity dynamics to develop. Specifically, it may be that those who continue to abide by the regulations are seen as moralizing, and thereby become subject to ‘do‐gooder derogation’. | Individuals should adopt a cautious approach to norm negotiation in inter‐personal contexts. Policymakers should consider the role of moral content in persuasive communications, and consider maintaining institutional messages regarding what is expected (e.g., retaining distance‐markers on shop floors). Care should be taken to avoid inadvertently communicating the message that social distancing (and similar) measures are no longer required as lockdown is eased. |
| Theme 3: How to effectively collectivize responses to the pandemic | |||
| 8. | Biddlestone et al. (2020) | Evidence from a cross‐sectional survey (N = 724) suggests that horizontal collectivism is positively related to compliance with public health advice because it is associated with decreases in feelings of powerlessness (and thus people feel that their behaviour can have a meaningful impact on viral transmission). Furthermore, vertical individualism was negatively related to physical distancing intentions, both directly and indirectly through its association with increases in belief in conspiracy theories and increases in powerlessness. | Promoting collectivism (‘we are all in this together’) may increase compliance with physical distancing and hygiene behaviours, thus improving public efforts to reduce viral transmission. |
| 9. | Templeton et al. (2020) | Threats are not equal: Social inequalities affect people's ability to comply with public health advice. Non‐compliance can, in turn, decrease community cohesion and increase discrimination, and worsen the long‐term implications of the pandemic. | Governments should facilitate equal ability to comply with the new public health advice, by respecting the different needs of different communities, and should prioritize accounting for structural inequalities in policy and guidance to avoid alienating vulnerable groups and preventing them from being able to follow the advice. Post‐pandemic, additional support should be provided to those groups who were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. |
| 10. | Drury et al. (2020) | Provides a three‐fold classification of explanations for deaths in disasters as a counter argument to explanations that are based on notions of collective panic, selfishness and psychological frailty. Chiding people as ‘selfish’ and for ‘panicking’ individualizes the problem and increases the likelihood of selfish behaviour. In reality, people tend to under‐react to threat, but systemic factors mean that disasters do not affect everyone in the same way, leaving some people with fewer behavioural choices. | Official messaging should build trust by treating the public with respect and openly communicating public health information, and aim to collectivize and normalize – rather than individualize – the risks and effects of (not) adhering to public health advice. |
| 11. | Reicher and Stott (2020) | Whether the COVID‐19 pandemic leads to order or disorder is likely to be influenced by the historical context of relationships between the people and the state, the nature of political leadership within the pandemic and the perception and reality of procedural justice. Additionally, it is important that policing measures proceed from the assumption of shared identity, rather than risk reinforcing division. | The immediate behavioural responses to the pandemic cannot be divorced from longer‐term social trends, or from deep‐rooted social inequalities. Long‐term practical initiatives to address structural inequality are needed. Policing should be geared more towards enablement than enforcement. |
| 12. | Elcheroth and Drury (2020) | The evidence base on how people behave in crisis situations highlights the importance of taking into account the malleability of social behaviour, the role of social identity and collective continuity, and the need for clear communication and practicable guidance and regulations. | Policy makers should anticipate rapid social change and make constructive behaviour visible in order to ensure this change occurs in desirable directions. Guidance should be clear and easy to put into practice, and inclusive role models should be used in disseminating this guidance. Encouraging recollection of past ordeals and how these were overcome will help build solidarity, and care should be taken to avoid reinforcing the myth of collective panic. Emergent communities should be allowed to develop organically, and efforts should be made to demonstrate shared vulnerability and to allow for the continuity of social ties. |
This article is being made freely available through PubMed Central as part of the COVID-19 public health emergency response. It can be used for unrestricted research re-use and analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source, for the duration of the public health emergency.