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Free keywords:
Polarization, Ideology, Trust in politicians, COVID-19, Prosociality, Health behavior, Worries
JEL:
D01 - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
JEL:
D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
JEL:
D91 - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
JEL:
I12 - Health Behavior
JEL:
I18 - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
JEL:
H11 - Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government
JEL:
H12 - Crisis Management
Abstract:
We investigate the relationship between political attitudes and prosociality in a survey of a representative sample of the U.S. population during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that an experimental measure of prosociality correlates positively with adherence to protective behaviors. Liberal political ideology predicts higher levels of protective behavior than conservative ideology, independently of the differences in prosociality across the two groups. Differences between liberals and conservatives are up to 4.4 times smaller in their behavior
than in judging the government’s crisis management. This result suggests that U.S. Americans are more polarized on ideological than behavioral grounds.
