The unique roles of threat perception and misinformation accuracy judgments in the relationship between political orientation and COVID‐19 health behaviors

Abstract

AbstractNot everyone engages in COVID‐19 related preventative health behaviors (PHB; e.g., mask wearing, social distancing) despite their demonstrated effectiveness for mitigating the spread of COVID‐19. In the United States, for instance, PHBs emerged as (and remain) a partisan issue. The current work examines partisan gaps in PHB by considering both informational and perceptual factors related to COVID‐19. Specifically, we focus on politically motivated belief in COVID‐19 (mis)information and simultaneously consider the roles of physical threat and disgust perception. We find that poor performance in misinformation accuracy judgments and subsequently lower COVID‐19 threat perceptions sequentially predict less PHB engagement. In Study 1 (N = 87 US undergraduate students), higher conservatism predicted lower COVID‐19 threat perceptions but not COVID‐19 disgust perceptions. Study 2 (N = 168 US undergraduate students) replicated this effect, while demonstrating that the relationship between stronger conservatism and lower engagement in PHB was mediated by higher accuracy judgments of COVID‐19 misinformation and, in turn, lower perceptions of COVID‐19 threat but not disgust. This suggests that considering threat perception is essential to understanding how politically motivated endorsement of COVID‐19 misinformation shapes PHB.