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Title: Moral Judgments Impact Perceived Risks From COVID-19 Exposure
The COVID-19 pandemic created enormously difficult decisions for individuals trying to navigate both the risks of the pandemic and the demands of everyday life. Good decision making in such scenarios can have life and death consequences. For this reason, it is important to understand what drives risk assessments during a pandemic, and to investigate the ways that these assessments might deviate from ideal risk assessments. In a preregistered online study of U.S. residents (N = 841) using two blocks of vignettes about potential COVID exposure scenarios, we investigated the effects of moral judgment, importance, and intentionality on COVID infection risk assessments. Results demonstrate that risk judgments are sensitive to factors unrelated to the objective risks of infection. Specifically, activities that are morally justified are perceived as safer while those that might subject people to blame or culpability, are seen as riskier, even when holding objective risk fixed. Similarly, unintentional COVID exposures are judged as safer than intentional COVID exposures. While the effect sizes are small, these findings may have implications for public health and risk communications, particularly if public health officials are themselves subject to these biases.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1922424
PAR ID:
10474016
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
University of California Press
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Collabra: Psychology
Volume:
9
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2474-7394
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
moral judgment risk decision making COVID-19 intention
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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