Abstract
Research suggests political identity has strong influence over individuals’ attitudes and beliefs, which in turn can affect their behavior. Likewise, firsthand experience with an issue can also affect attitudes and beliefs. A large (N = 6,383) survey (Pew Research and Ipsos W64) of Americans was analyzed to investigate the effects of both political identity (i.e., Democrat or Republican) and personal impact (i.e., whether they suffered job or income loss) on individuals’ reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that political identity and personal impact influenced the American public’s attitudes about and response to COVID-19. Consistent with prior research, political identity exerted a strong influence on self-reports of emotional distress, threat perception, discomfort with exposure, support for restrictions, and perception of under/overreaction by individuals and institutions. The difference between Democrats and Republican responses were consistent with their normative value differences and with the contemporary partisan messaging. Personal impact exerted a comparatively weaker influence on reported emotional distress and threat perception. Both factors had a weak influence on appraisal of individual and government responses. The dominating influence of political identity carried over into the bivariate relations among these self-reported attitudes and responses. In particular, the appraisal of government response divided along party lines, tied to opposing views of whether there has been over- or under-reaction to the pandemic. The dominance of political identity has important implications for crisis management and reflects the influence of normative value differences between the parties, partisan messaging on the pandemic, and polarization in American politics.
Highlights
Amidst a polarized political climate (Jacobson, 2013; Doherty, 2014; Hare and Poole, 2014; Dunlap et al, 2016; Garimella and Weber, 2017), the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has swept across the United States (US)
We examined how the relationship between attitudes about COVID-19 differed as a function of both personal impact and political identity
The effect size of political identity was medium-to-large, whereas the effect size of personal impact was small (Cohen, 1988; Miles and Shevlin, 2001). This difference in effect size was significant in that the 90% confidence intervals (CI) surrounding ηp2, do not overlap, indicating that political identity was more predictive of participants’ responses than whether they had been personally affected by COVID-19
Summary
Amidst a polarized political climate (Jacobson, 2013; Doherty, 2014; Hare and Poole, 2014; Dunlap et al, 2016; Garimella and Weber, 2017), the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has swept across the United States (US). As of the 24th of August 2020, the US reported over 5.5 million cases and 175,000 deaths due to COVID-19 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). The impact of the pandemic is widespread, felt in terms of lives lost and in terms of psychological harm (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020; Cullen et al, 2020; Serafini et al, 2020) and economic loss (Baker et al, 2020; Fernandes, 2020; Soucheray, 2020), with 20.6. The disease, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, 2020), produces several flu-like symptoms, such as coughing (often with sputum), shortness of breath, muscle aches, and fevers (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). The combination of factors necessitated a swift response from institutions and organizations under conditions of great uncertainty and accountability pressures
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