Table 2.

Study 2: why are conservatives less concerned about the coronavirus? Testing possible explanations of the conservatism➔perceived coronavirus threat relationship.

Conservatism➔threat	Indirect	Indirect	Indirect
Explanatory variable	Effect	Effect LCI	Effect UCI
COVID-19 experience and impacts:
Personal symptoms	−0.00	−0.02	0.01
Contact others with symptoms	−0.01	−0.04	0.01
Financial impacts	−0.01	−0.03	0.00
Resource impacts	−0.01	−0.05	0.02
Watch COVID-related news	−0.02	−0.07	0.01
Total experience/impact	−0.03	−0.07	0.01
COVID-19 political beliefs:
Reactance to government orders	−0.07**	−0.12	−0.03
Desire for government to restrict	−0.13****	−0.18	−0.08
Desire for government to punish	0.01	−0.03	0.06
Government research spending	−0.01	−0.06	0.03
Government stimulus spending	−0.05**	−0.10	−0.02
Total political beliefs:	−0.09**	−0.16	−0.03
COVID-19 partisan messaging:
Federal messaging trust	0.02	−0.01	0.06
Conservative (versus liberal) news	−0.03	−0.10	0.05
Total messaging:	0.01	−0.08	0.12

Note: Listwise N = 285; ****p < .0001; ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05; Effect sizes and confidence intervals based on 5000 bootstrapped samples; all analyses control for age, biological sex assigned at birth, education level, income level, and population of resident city. Negative indirect effects = one + and one – effect in the indirect path (e.g., conservativism is + related to M and M is negatively related to COVID-19 threat, or conservatism is negatively related to M and M is positively related to COVID-19 threat); positive indirect effects = both effects in the indirect path are the same sign.