Political ideology and pandemic lifestyles: the indirect effects of empathy, authoritarianism, and threat.

Background: In this paper, we integrate theory and research from sociology, psychology, and political science to develop and test a mediation model that helps to explain political conservatism is often associated with pandemic behaviors and lifestyles that are inconsistent with public health recommendations for COVID-19.

Methods: Using national data from the 2021 (n = 1743), we formally test the indirect effects of political conservatism (an index of Republican party identification, conservative political orientation, right-wing news media consumption, and 2020 Trump vote) on pandemic lifestyles (an index of social distancing, hand sanitizing, mask usage, and vaccination) through the mechanisms of empathy (concern about the welfare of others), authoritarian beliefs (authoritarian aggressiveness and acquiescence to authority), and pandemic threat perceptions (threats to self and to the broader society).

Result: Our results confirm that political conservatism is associated with riskier pandemic lifestyles.

Conservatism and infrequent mask usage: A study of US counties during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Objective: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eventually recommended wearing masks in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the practice has been unevenly distributed in the United States.

Methods: In this article, we model county-level infrequent mask usage as a function of three pillars of conservatism: (1) Republican political leadership (percentage of votes for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election), (2) conservative Protestantism (percentage evangelical Christian), and (3) right-wing media consumption (Google searches for ).

Results: Our analyses indicate that mask usage tends to be in counties with greater support for President Trump (in majority Trump counties), counties with more evangelical Christians, and areas with greater interest in .