A wide range of empirical scholarship has documented a partisan gap in health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, but the political foundations and temporal dynamics of these partisan gaps remain poorly understood. Using an original six-wave individual panel study (n = 3,000) of Americans throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that at the individual level, partisan differences in health behavior grew rapidly in the early months of the pandemic and are explained almost entirely by individual support for or opposition to President Trump. Our results comprise powerful evidence that Trump support (or opposition), rather than ideology or simple partisan identity, explains partisan gaps in health behavior in the United States. In a time of populist resurgence around the world, public health efforts must consider the impact of charismatic authority in addition to entrenched partisanship.
The COVID‐19 pandemic has affected the lives of all Americans, but the severity of the pandemic has been experienced unevenly across space and time. Some states saw sharp rises in COVID‐19 cases in early March, whereas case counts rose much later in the rest of the country. In this article, we examine the relationship between exposure to COVID‐19 and citizens' views on what type of measures are required to deal with the crises and how experience with and exposure to COVID‐19 is associated with greater partisan polarization. We find consistent evidence of partisan divergence in pandemic‐response policy preferences across the first six months of the COVID‐19 pandemic: Republicans support national control measures whereas Democrats support welfare policies, and interparty differences grow over time. We find only limited evidence that exposure or experience moderates these partisan differences. Our findings are consistent with the view that Americans interpret the COVID‐19 pandemic in fundamentally partisan manner, and that objective pandemic conditions play at most a minor role in shaping mass preferences.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10443886
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Political Psychology
- Volume:
- 43
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 0162-895X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 1169-1189
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Main effect models contend that perceived social support benefits mental health in the presence and the absence of stressful events, whereas stress-buffering models contend that perceived social support benefits mental health especially when individuals are facing stressful events. We tested these models of how perceived social support impacts mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and evaluated whether characteristics of everyday social interactions statistically mediated this association – namely, (a) received support, the visible and deliberate assistance provided by others, and (b) pleasantness, the extent to which an interaction is positive, flows easily, and leads individuals to feel understood and validated. 591 United States adults completed a 3-week ecological momentary assessment protocol sampling characteristics of their everyday social interactions that was used to evaluate between-person average values and within-person daily fluctuations in everyday social interaction characteristics. Global measures of perceived social support and pandemic-related stressors were assessed at baseline. Psychiatric symptoms of depression and anxiety were assessed at baseline, at the end of each day of ecological momentary assessment, and at 3-week follow-up. Consistent with a main effect model, higher baseline perceived social support predicted decreases in psychiatric symptoms at 3-week follow-up (β = −.09, p = .001). Contrary to a stress-buffering model, we did not find an interaction of pandemic-stressors × perceived social support. The main effect of perceived social support on mental health was mediated by the pleasantness of everyday social interactions, but not by received support in everyday social interactions. We found evidence for both main effects and stress-buffering effects of within-person fluctuations in interaction pleasantness on daily changes in mental health. Results suggest the importance of everyday social interaction characteristics, especially their pleasantness, in linking perceived social support and mental health.
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Methods We compared women who participated in the study pre- and early pandemic with women who participated mid-pandemic and later-pandemic (when vaccines became widely available). We collected self-reported symptom frequencies (e.g., aches/stiffness in joints, irritability), and assessments of stress, depression, and physical activity through questionnaires as well as measures of adiposity (BMI and percent body fat). Additionally, we asked open-ended questions about how the pandemic influenced women’s health and experience of menopause. Comparisons across pre-/early, mid-, and later pandemic categories were carried out using ANOVA and Chi-square analyses as appropriate. The Levene test for homogeneity of variances was examined prior to each ANOVA. Open-ended questions were analyzed for yes/no responses and general themes.
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