Beliefs about Covid-19 as a threat to values are related to preventive behaviors and fear of Covid-19

Abstract

We investigated factors related to preventive behaviors and fear of COVID-19: values and beliefs about threat to values because of COVID-19. In two studies, participants reported their own values and evaluated how COVID-19 may threaten values. They also reported their preventive behaviors (washing hands, wearing a facial mask, keeping social distance, and avoiding public places) and fear of COVID-19. COVID-19 is perceived as a threat to personal focused values (openness and self-enhancement values) rather than social focused values (conservation and self-transcendence values). Both value importance and perceived threats to values are related to preventive behaviors and fear of COVID-19. Greater importance of conservation values was related to engaging in preventive behaviors and increased fear of COVID-19. Perceived threats to personal focused values (self-enhancement and openness values) were also related to engaging in preventive behaviors and fear of COVID-19.

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Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/13591053221142348

Repository URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10023/26694