Collectivistic orientation moderates the effect of personal control on evaluations of societal disease-control measures: During and beyond the COVID-19 crisis in China

Abstract

Two pre-registered studies examined people's psychological collectivism, personal control, and attitudes toward disease-control measures in the context of the COVID-19 crisis and more generalized contexts. Study 1 surveyed 819 residents in Shanghai in late May 2022 when they were undergoing a stringent city-wide lockdown caused by an outbreak of the Omicron variant. We found that participants' psychological collectivism attenuated the negative association between experiences of COVID-19 restrictions and personal control and enhanced the positive association between personal control and support for COVID-19 restrictions. Study 2 (N = 403) recruited an online sample with diverse backgrounds and demographic characteristics and sought to extend the findings of Study 1 beyond the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were exposed to a series of hypothetical scenarios depicting a fictitious virus with varying fatality and transmissibility. As in Study 1, participants higher in psychological collectivism exhibited a stronger positive association between personal control and endorsement of stricter societal disease-control measures, but only in low-fatality, high-transmissibility situations. The implications of these findings for facilitating public support for disease-control efforts are discussed.