The Political Pandemic: Investigating the Relationship between Political Ideology and COVID-19 Compliance

Allie Moore / amoore7@bellarmine.edu / Faculty Advisor: Hank Rothgerber

One key to curtailing the health costs to COVID-19 is adherence to social distancing measures. Despite their importance, distancing measures seem to have proved divisive. The present research sought to identify ideological differences in behavioral compliance to distancing measures and to account for the psychological underpinnings of behavioral differences. A first study (April, 2020; n=610) using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk revealed conservatives to be significantly less likely to obey social distancing recommendations than liberals. Differences among conservatives and liberals in adherence to self-reported social distancing practices were significantly mediated by perceived COVID-19 health risk and perceived media accuracy in covering the virus. A second MTurk study (November, 2020; n=537) replicated the previous finding that conservatives are significantly less like to follow (and attitudinally support) COVID-mitigating measures than liberals. Differences in compliance and attitudes between liberals and conservatives were significantly mediated by perceived health risk, prioritization of the economy, perceived media accuracy, belief in biased science, moral foundations (harm), and support for President Trump. Results from these studies have implications for responding to political polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.