Abstract
Data were collected from 896 participants in three Chinese cities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to varying degrees through an online survey platform. A conditional process model was then proposed for the impact of optimistic bias on self-protection behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of social norms. Statistical analysis demonstrates that optimistic bias has a negative impact on self-protection behaviors through message acceptance. Perceived social norms moderate this relationship in the following ways: (1) The higher the perceptions of social norms, the smaller the negative impact of optimistic bias on message acceptance, and the smaller the positive impact of message acceptance on self-protection behaviors. (2) Within a certain range, the higher the perceptions of social norms, the smaller the negative impact, both direct and indirect, of optimistic bias on self-protection behaviors. (3) The direct and indirect effects of optimistic bias on self-protection behaviors become insignificant when perceptions of social norms are very strong. Comparing the data of the three cities shows that higher risk is associated with a stronger role of social norms in moderating the relationship between optimistic bias and self-protection behaviors. The above results suggest that there may be both internal (optimistic bias) and external (social norms) reference points in individual decision-making regarding health behaviors. The theoretical and practical significance of the dual reference points are discussed.
Highlights
Cable News Network (CNN) reported on March 25, 2020 that a group of young adults who thought “they were invincible” held a coronavirus party in Kentucky, the United States, to defy state guidance to practice social distancing, and that at least one of them were found to have the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)1 the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned young people that they are not invincible from the novel coronavirus2 The overconfidence of the partygoers in their immunity is exactly what psychologists call optimistic bias or unrealisticConditional Process Model of Optimism optimism; that is,people systematically tend to underestimate their personal probability of encountering negative events compared with other individuals under the same conditions (Weinstein, 1980; Harris and Hahn, 2011)
The results show that the scales of the five main variables measured in the questionnaire have high reliability
Unlike previous studies that solely investigate the relationship between optimistic bias and health behavior from the individual perspective (e.g., Williams and Clarke, 1997; Arnett, 2000; Bränström et al, 2006; Caponecchia, 2010; Popova and HalpernFelsher, 2016; Masiero et al, 2018; Lopez and Leffingwell, 2020), this study introduces social norms from the group perspective to help better understand this relationship from the following aspects
Summary
Cable News Network (CNN) reported on March 25, 2020 that a group of young adults who thought “they were invincible” held a coronavirus party in Kentucky, the United States, to defy state guidance to practice social distancing, and that at least one of them were found to have the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned young people that they are not invincible from the novel coronavirus The overconfidence of the partygoers in their immunity is exactly what psychologists call optimistic bias or unrealisticConditional Process Model of Optimism optimism; that is,people systematically tend to underestimate (overestimate) their personal probability of encountering negative (positive) events compared with other individuals under the same conditions (Weinstein, 1980; Harris and Hahn, 2011). Studies that examine the impact of optimistic bias on health behavior in different behavioral areas, such as alcohol consumption (Masiero et al, 2018), smoking (Popova and Halpern-Felsher, 2016), sun protection (Bränström et al, 2006), obesity and hypertension (White et al, 2017), and safe driving (Delhomme et al, 2009) Most of these studies concluded that optimistic bias had a negative impact on health behavior (Weinstein and Klein, 1995; Harris and Napper, 2005; Park and Ju, 2016; Hwang et al, 2019). The intervention methods that have received considerable attention include self-affirmation (Klein et al, 2010; Epton et al, 2015), perceived control (Jansen et al, 2018), and self-efficacy (Morisset et al, 2010)
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