Running head: Breaking COVID restrictions Ideological responses to the breaking of COVID-19 social distancing recommendations Craig A. Harper* & Darren Rhodes Nottingham Trent University (UK) * Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Dr. Craig Harper Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University 50 Shakespeare Street, Nottingham, NG1 4FQ, UK Email: [email protected] Tel.: +44 (0)115 848 4718 Twitter: @CraigHarper19 Open Science Practices Materials, data and code are available at: https://osf.io/u2ezy/ Pre-registered data analysis plan is available at: https://osf.io/ums9j ** PREPRINT NOT REVIEWED - PLEASE CITE RESPONSIBLY ** 1 Abstract COVID-19 has plagued the globe since January 2020, infecting millions and claiming the lives of several hundreds of thousands (at the time of writing). Despite this, many individuals have ignored public health guidance and continued to socialize in groups. Emergent work has highlighted the potential role that ideology plays in such behavior, and judgements of it. In response to this contemporary cultural phenomenon, we tested whether judgements of those allegedly flouting the guidance on social distancing were influenced by an interaction between the ideologies of those providing judgements, and those allegedly breaking the rules. Our data suggest that judgements of those flouting social distancing guidance are influenced by ideology in a symmetrical way. That is, both liberals and conservatives condemn outgroup flouting more than ingroup flouting. We discuss this finding in the context of theoretical work into ideological symmetries, and the implications of growing ideological polarization in contemporary Western democracies. Key words: COVID-19, social distancing, ideological bias, motivated cognition, ideological symmetry 2 Ideological responses to the breaking of COVID-19 social distancing recommendations Introduction The novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), which originated in Wuhan (China) in late 2019, has spread globally at an alarming rate, infecting millions of people and killing up to 1% of those who contract it (Chen et al., 2020; Rajgor et al., 2020). The most common symptoms of COVID-19 include a continuous dry cough, fever, severe fatigue, and the loss of the senses of smell and taste (Parma et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020), although many experience no noticeable symptoms (Holshue et al, 2020). Responses to the virus internationally have varied in scope, severity, and general epidemiological approach, from widespread testing and tracing in South Korea, to gradations of citizen lockdowns in China, Italy, the UK, and USA (Baird, 2020; Graham-Harrison & Kuo, 2020; Public Health England, 2020; Sohrabi et al., 2020; World Health Organization, 2020). These approaches each place a unique set of restrictions and recommendations for behavior change on citizens in each country, with varying levels of compliance with these. In this paper, we diverge from the majority of existing research emerging about citizens’ personal behavioral changes in response to COVID-19, and instead focus on their responses to high-profile others who act against government guidelines. Why do people (not) comply with government advice on COVID-19? With different behavioral constraints comes the potential for non-compliance. A small collection of psychological studies has sought to understand why people might (not) follow guidelines in the context of COVID-19. One of the earliest of these studies reported that appealing to people’s sense of duty to stop the spread of the virus led to greater intentions to engage in social distancing and more regular handwashing (Everett et al., 2020). Although these effects were not statistically significant when correcting for multiple comparisons (Anvari, 2020), it is consistent with the view that these behaviors may be predicted by altruistic motivations (Brooks et al., 2020; Oosterhoff & Palmer, 2020; Pfattheicher et al., 2020). This work does not discount a personal motivation for following social distancing guidance. For example, although fear about COVID-19 could lead to maladaptive behavioral responses (Ahorsu et al., 2020), empirical analysis of this proposition has shown the opposite of this – that fear of COVID-19 is predictive of greater levels of guideline adherence (Harper et al., 2020). This is most likely an adaptive change in behavior, with more regular handwashing and social distancing being enacted to alleviate COVID-19 related anxieties. 3 Owing to the apparent deontological motivations of positive behavior change to stop the spread of COVID-19 (Everett et al., 2020), other studies have looked at the moral roots of engaging with health advice and media stories about the virus. Contrary to expectations, Harper et al. (2020) reported no effects of intuitive moral foundations on behavior change after controlling for fear of the virus, with even a moral impulse related to pathogen avoidance being unrelated to increased social distancing and hand hygiene regimes. They similarly found no effect of political orientation, which led to the conclusion that the pandemic may acts as a trigger for political partisans to acknowledge their shared humanity and begin to reduce the modern trend of increasing polarization driven at least in part by the availability of hyper-partisan online media (Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018). However, subsequent research taking place as the pandemic has developed has uncovered ideological differences in beliefs about the virus, attitudes toward lockdowns and other preventative behaviors (e.g., the use of face coverings in public spaces), and approval of government responses to the COVID-19 situation (Kushner Gadarian et al., 2020; Pennycook et al., 2020). These differences appear to indicative of motivated ideological responses, with those previously voting for the current government expressing higher levels of support for their response in the USA, UK, and Canada (Pennycook et al., 2020), and self-identified Republicans (vs. Democrats) favor individualistic responses and are skeptical of the motives of intellectual scientific authorities (Brzezinski et al., 2020; Kushner Gadarian et al., 2020). Ideologically motivated judgments of others’ flouting of guidance? High-profile cases of citizens flouting recommendations related to social distancing are most commonly reported in various American States wherein more stringent lockdowns have been mandated. Fears related to the economic implications of lockdowns (as opposed to fear of the virus), as well as ideologically based preferences for self-determination, temperamental difficulties with impulse control, and a rejection of scientific advice appear to be the core motivations for willfully and directly breaking such guidelines to stay indoors (Brzezinski et al., 2020; Kuiper et al., 2020). In the UK, several government officials have been found to be acting against their own advice, with scientific advisors in England and Scotland having to resign (and in one high profile case - not resign) their positions on expert panels, and members of the British parliament being found to be travelling between their constituencies and second homes in other parts of the country. The most notable example of the flouting of government advice emerged on March 23rd, 2020 when it was reported that Dominic Cummings (Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior policy advisor) travelled more than 250 4 miles to his parents’ home with his children. This journey occurred after his wife developed symptoms of COVID-19, and as such contravened the government’s advice that outlined how households should self-isolate indoors for 14 days in these circumstances. The response to Cummings’ actions illuminated and re-exaggerated ideological divisions related to the Brexit issue. That is, Cummings was a leading figure in the British vote to leave the European Union (EU) in 2016 (Fuller, 2017), and thus pro-Leave individuals tended to support Cummings’ flouting of the isolation guidelines, while those wanting the UK to remain a member state of the EU calling for his resignation or firing. Although this is just one high profile case of guideline transgression, the seemingly ideological response to it highlights a potential variable that influences support for adherence to the guidelines more generally (see Kushner Gadarian et al., 2020; Pennycook et al., 2020). This is particularly important in light of emerging global protests in response to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. Floyd’s death sparked global protests against the background of claims about systemic racism, and a re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. This there offers a unique moment in history within which to examine the relative strengths of two competing forces in support (or opposition) to mass protests. That is, while recent research has found that fear of COVID-19 is predictive of adherence and support of social distancing and virus-mitigating behaviors (Harper et al., 2020), a desire or perceived duty to act altruistically is also linked to both this outcome (Brooks et al., 2020; Everett et al., 2020; Oosterhoff & Palmer, 2020; Pfattheicher et al., 2020) and engagement in and support social justice and environmental causes (e.g., Cartabuke et al., 2019; Gkargkavouzi et al., 2019). Further, while active social justice protesters are typically characterized by a future-oriented nature (Shavit et al., 2014), engaging in the types of mass protests seen