People who believe they are invulnerable to infectious diseases often fail to protect themselves against the disease threats that others pose to them. The current paper hypothesizes that social pain—the experience of feeling interpersonally hurt or rejected—can sensitize the behavioral-immune system by giving people added reason to see others as worthy of protecting themselves against. We obtained four daily diary samples involving 2,794 participants who reported how hurt/rejected they felt by those they knew, how personally concerned they were about the spread of illness/COVID-19, and how vigilantly they engaged in self-protective behaviors to safeguard their health each day. An integrative data analysis revealed robust evidence that people who believed they were invulnerable to infectious disease engaged in more concerted efforts to protect themselves against the greater daily risk of contracting COVID-19 when being in acute social pain gave them added reason to see others as harmful to them.
In five experiments ( N = 1,490), participants were asked to imagine themselves as programmers of self-driving cars who had to decide how to program the car to respond in a potential accident: spare the driver or spare pedestrians. Alternatively, participants imagined that they were a mayor grappling with difficult moral dilemmas concerning COVID-19. Either they, themselves, had to decide how to program the car or which COVID-19 policy to implement (high-agency condition) or they were told by their superior how to act (low-agency condition). After learning that a tragic outcome occurred because of their action, participants reported their felt culpability. Although we expected people to feel less culpable about the outcome if they acted in accordance with their superior’s injunction than if they made the decision themselves, participants actually felt more culpable when they followed their superior’s order. Some possible reasons for this counterintuitive finding are discussed.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1824193
- PAR ID:
- 10536337
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Psychological Science
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 0956-7976
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 635-645
- Size(s):
- p. 635-645
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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