Date of Award
Fall 5-11-2021
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts - Psychology
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Dr. James Schaeffer
Second Advisor
Dr. Sarah Savoy
Third Advisor
Dr. Mark Ludorf
Fourth Advisor
Dr. Keith Hubbard
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Adherence to COVID-19 preventing measures is becoming increasingly important as governments across the world realize COVID-19 is not an acute, but a chronic problem. There is, however, disagreement over to what extent COVID-19 is a problem. In the United States, the division appears to be primarily along party lines (Democrat and Republican[1]), though even within parties there is division. This division might be explained by differences in: the behavioral immune system and trust in government. Additional factors to examine include: personality, fear of COVID-19, and religious beliefs. The present study used previously validated self-report measures to assess where respondents fell on the factors mentioned above. Additionally, a self-report measure was created to assess beliefs about and frequency of behaviors aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19. The first hypothesis was that Republicans in the United States would report that they perform fewer preventative behaviors than Democrats report. The second hypothesis was that there would be an interaction between political party and trust in government. It was predicted that Republicans would show a more negative relationship between trust in government and COVID-19 preventing behaviors than Democrats. The third hypothesis was that there would be an interaction between political party and perceived vulnerability to disease. It was
predicted that Republicans would show a more positive relationship between perceived vulnerability to disease and COVID-19 preventing behavior than Democrats. The fourth hypothesis was that an exploratory factor analysis would reveal clusters of related variables predictive of COVID-19 preventing behaviors. Hypothesis one was tested using a two-tailed point-biserial correlation, α = 0.05. Hypotheses two and three were tested using moderated linear regressions. Hypothesis four was examined using an exploratory factor analysis with a Scree plot to determine which factors contribute meaningfully to a model predicting COVID-19 preventing behaviors. Understanding the relationships between the behavioral immune system, trust in government, personality, fear of COVID-19, religious beliefs, and COVID-19 preventing behaviors may help tailor governmental responses to future pandemics, based off of how people are responding to COVID-19 at the time of writing, to improve adherence to preventative behaviors in the future.
[1] Given the synonymous use of Republican/conservative and Democrat/liberal in the USA, and because it gives a greater ability to generalize the results of the present study beyond the USA, the present review has drawn on literature looking at Republican/Democrat and conservative/liberal throughout, but for the analyses political orientation is operationally defined as Republican/Democrat.
Repository Citation
Potts, Caleb, "Predicting COVID-19 behavior: Is it all due to political orientation?" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 365.
https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/etds/365
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
