Abstract
In times of the coronavirus, complying with public health policies is essential to save lives. Understanding the factors that influence compliance with social distancing measures is therefore an urgent issue. The present research investigated the role of political and social trust for social distancing using a variety of methods. In Study 1 (N = 301), conducted with a sample from the United Kingdom in the midst of the virus outbreak (i.e., the first wave), neither political nor social trust had main associations with self-reported social distancing tendencies. However, both factors interacted such that social trust was associated with lower social distancing tendencies among participants with low levels of political trust. In Study 2, using an experimental longitudinal design and again conducted with a sample collected from the UK (N = 268) during the first wave of the pandemic, social distancing practices increased over time, independent of an experimental manipulation of political trust. Moreover, while the interaction between political and social trust from the first study could not be conceptually replicated, social trust was positively related to social distancing intentions. Moving from the individual to the country level and assessing actual behavior at both the first and second wave of the pandemic, in Study 3 (N = 65 countries), country-level political trust was related to less social distancing during the first wave. Social trust was related to a higher growth rate of infections. Against the background of these inconsistent findings, we discuss the potential positive and unexpected negative effects of social trust for social distancing.
Highlights
At the height of the so called “first wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic during the first quarter of 2020, almost all governments worldwide imposed lockdown policies in order to slow down the spread of the virus (Hale et al, 2020; WHO, 2020)
In addition to investigating the role of political trust, we focused on the role of social trust
The overall goal of this study was to investigate whether an intervention aimed at increasing political trust could (a) lead to changes in social distancing, and (b) attenuate the negative effect of social trust on social distancing intentions that was observed in Study 1
Summary
At the height of the so called “first wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic during the first quarter of 2020, almost all governments worldwide imposed lockdown policies in order to slow down the spread of the virus (Hale et al, 2020; WHO, 2020). After infection rates had slowed down over the summer, lockdown policies were loosened in many countries (Hale et al, 2020; WHO, 2020). Since the start of September 2020, infection rates in many parts of the world rapidly increased again, initiating the “second wave” of the pandemic and further lockdowns (Hale et al, 2020; WHO, 2020). Since the direct contact between humans has been identified as the most common mode of transmission, the focus on non-pharmaceutical prevention measures has mainly been to implement social distancing practices
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