Compliance with Masking Mandates During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Influence of Moral Foundations
Open Access
Author:
Corby, Ella
Area of Honors:
Criminology
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Eric Silver, Thesis Supervisor Stacy Silver, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
masking compliance social distancing Moral Foundations Theory individualizing intuitions binding intuitions public health mandates
Abstract:
This thesis uses a survey of 565 Penn State students to explore the relationship between moral foundations and compliance with masking mandates. Grouping the constructs of fairness and harm as individualizing moral intuitions, we hypothesize that those who place value upon these foundations will in turn correlate with greater compliance pertaining to COVID-19 masking and social distancing protocol. Classifying the constructs of loyalty, authority and purity as binding moral intuitions, we hypothesize that those who stress these foundations will be associated with lessened compliance with COVID-19 masking and social distancing protocol. We hypothesize an additional correlation between study participants that approved of Trump’s handling of the pandemic and lessened social distancing compliance. Lastly, we hypothesize that binding moral intuitions will have a greater effect on COVID-19 noncompliance among those identifying as Trump supporters. The results of this study substantiate the first, second, and third hypotheses, whilst being unable to achieve statistical significance for the final hypothesis, likely due to an insufficiently sized sample of students. We conclude that individualizing moral intuitions are associated with higher COVID-19 compliance levels than binding intuitions, as well as those who approve of Trump represent the lowest levels of compliance with COVID-19 safety mandates.
