Functional fear predicts public health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic

Harper, CA ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3172-0129, Satchell, LP, Fido, D and Latzman, RD, 2020. Functional fear predicts public health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. ISSN 1557-1874

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Abstract

In the current context of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), health professionals are working with social scientists to inform government policy on how to slow the spread of the virus. An increasing amount of social scientific research has looked at the role of public message framing, for instance, but few studies have thus far examined the role of individual differences in emotional and personality-based variables in predicting virus-mitigating behaviors. In this study, we recruited a large international community sample (N = 324) to complete measures of self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19, fear of the virus, moral foundations, political orientation, and behavior change in response to the pandemic. Consistently, the only predictor of positive behavior change (e.g., social distancing, improved hand hygiene) was fear of COVID-19, with no effect of politically relevant variables. We discuss these data in relation to the potentially functional nature of fear in global health crises.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
Creators:	Harper, C.A., Satchell, L.P., Fido, D. and Latzman, R.D.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	27 April 2020
ISSN:	1557-1874
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s11469-020-00281-5 DOI 1325025 Other
Rights:	Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	14 May 2020 10:52
Last Modified:	14 May 2020 10:52
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/39844

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