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

AbstractTwo 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.