During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Communication Neuroscience Lab has been actively studying what kind of messaging effectively encourages actions that benefit public health (e.g., wearing masks, avoiding large social gatherings) and greater compassion (e.g., checking in on and supporting vulnerable people). Working together with my fellow lab mates, I have been involved in three manuscripts that investigate how people respond to COVID-19 and pandemic-related health messaging.

Dispositional Victimhood

Dispositional victimhood (i.e., someone’s tendency to feel like a victim in general, not just in the pandemic) has been associated with lower empathy and greater sensitivity to threats. In one study with over 600 participants, we found that dispositional victimhood was associated with more positive responses to stories of people suffering during the pandemic. This greater positivity predicted less support for policies aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus and greater support for quickly reopening the economy. In a registered report (under review), we aim to replicate this finding, testing for specific mechanisms such as empathy and schadenfreude.

Narrative Messaging

Narrative messages are first-person accounts describing someone’s personal story. Narrative messages can reduce defensiveness and increase engagement with the message content through relatable protagonists. In this student-led project, we are examining how narrative messaging (vs. matter-of-fact expository messaging) can be used to increase concern for and actions favoring people who are especially vulnerable at this time (e.g., unemployed people, healthcare workers, prisoners). Participants in the narrative condition reported greater transportation into the message compared to participants in the expository condition. Consistent with our pre-registered predictions, we also observed indirect effects of narrative (vs. expository) messages, through increased message transportation, on: (1) beliefs that by physical distancing, one can protect vulnerable people, (2) beliefs that members of the target groups (i.e., healthcare workers and people who are incarcerated) were vulnerable, (3) intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that help family and friends, and (4) intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that help members of vulnerable groups. Together these results suggest that narratives can be used to motivate prosocial action during the COVID-19 pandemic to the extent that the narratives elicit transportation.

Collectivism

In this student-led project, we hypothesized that collectivism, a cultural variable characterizing the extent that individuals see themselves in relation to others, contributes to people’s willingness to adhere to public health guidance (e.g., mask wearing, social distancing). Consistent with preregistered predictions, across three studies (n=2864), including a U.S. nationally representative sample, people’s collectivist orientation was positively associated with intentions, positive beliefs, norm perceptions, and policy support for the preventive behaviors. In separate analyses at the country level (n=69 countries), more collectivist countries demonstrated lower growth rate in both COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths. Together, these studies demonstrate the positive role of collectivism at the individual- and country-level in reducing COVID-19 transmission, and highlight the need to consider culture in public health policies and communications.