Effects of Cognitive Dissonance Activation Emerged from Not Imposing Lockdown Restrictions on COVID-19-related Attitudes and Preventive Actions Considering the Role of Gender

Abstract

Background: During the pandemic of COVID-19, some countries imposed lockdown restrictions on their cities to stop the outbreak of the virus. However, this mandatory lockdown was not imposed by all countries. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the induced-compliance situation generated by not imposing the lockdown restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals' COVID-19 perceived risk and practicing the World Health Organization preventive actions, considering the moderating role of gender. Methods: The research was conducted through a causal-comparative method. Participants were 320 social media users who were randomly selected to complete the justification of COVID-19 perceived risk and COVID-19 preventive action implementation questionnaires. Instruments' validity and reliability were confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach alpha. Results: The analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed significant interactive effects of gender and work attendance on the justification of COVID-19 perceived risk so that the highest rate of justification was applied by males who were required to attend their workplace physically. The ANOVA results showed the significant main effects of gender and work attendance on the action. Based on these findings, the lowest rate of preventive actions belonged to males and those who attended their workplace physically. Conclusions: It is concluded that not imposing the lockdown restrictions, other than its direct role in increasing social contacts and the probability of virus spread, also lowers preventive actions implementation. This could happen due to belief modification to eliminate the undesirable state of cognitive dissonance that emerged from the induced-compliance situations.