Gun attitudes on campus: United and divided by safety needs

All people share a need for safety. Yet people’s pursuit of safety can conflict when it comes to guns, with some people perceiving guns as a means to safety and others perceiving guns as a threat to safety. We examined this conflict on a U.S. college campus that prohibits guns. We distinguished between people (N = 11,390) who (1) own a gun for protection, (2) own a gun exclusively for reasons other than protection (e.g., collecting, sports), and (3) do not own a gun. Protection owners felt less safe on campus and supported allowing guns on campus. They also reported that they and others would feel safer and that gun violence would decrease if they carried a gun on campus. Non-owners and non-protection owners felt the reverse. The findings suggest that protection concerns, rather than gun-ownership per se, account for diverging perceptions and attitudes about guns and gun control.     

Openness relates to COVID-19 vaccination rates across 48 United States but politics trump personality

Does geographic variation in personality across the United States relate to COVID-19 vaccination rates? To answer this question, we combined multiple state-level datasets: (a) Big Five personality averages (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness; Rentfrow et al., 2008), (b) COVID-19 full-vaccination rates (CDC, 2021a), (c) health-relevant demographic covariates (population density, per capita gross domestic product, and racial/ethnic data; Webster et al., 2021), and (d) political and religiosity data. Analyses showed openness as the strongest correlate of full-vaccination rates (r = 0.51). Controlling for other traits, demographic covariates, and spatial dependence, openness remained significantly related to full-vaccination rates (r_p = 0.55). Adding political and religiosity data to this model diminished openness effects for full-vaccination rates to non-significance (r_p = 0.26); however, extraversion emerged as a significant correlate of full-vaccination rates (r_p = 0.37). Although politics are paramount, we suspect that states with higher average openness scores are more conducive to novel thinking and behavior—dispositions that may be crucial in motivating people to take newly-developed vaccines based on new technologies to confront a novel coronavirus.     

The protective role of social network factors during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

The present study examined the relationship between COVID-19 threat perception, isolating health precautions, and loneliness. As a test of the stress-buffering hypothesis (Cohen & Wills, 1985), this study also examined if social network factors representing various aspects of social support moderated, or weakened, the relationship between threat perception, isolating health precautions, and loneliness. Participants (N = 1149) provided information about themselves, as well as 15 other people they know via an online survey. We found that structural and compositional social network factors, density, number of close alters, network threat perception, network covid cautiousness and number of vaccinated alters all negatively related to loneliness. Further, using moderated mediation analyses, we found that network threat perception and network covid cautiousness moderated the indirect relationship between threat perception and loneliness through precautions. At high levels of these factors, the mediation was less likely to be significant suggesting that the social network factors may buffer people from the loneliness that sometimes comes with engaging in isolating health precautions in response to the perceived threat of COVID-19.     

COVID-19-related threat perceptions,political identity,and voting in the 2020 presidential election

Perceptions of the COVID-19 virus varied drastically in the United States, with many people highly concerned by health-related consequences (realistic threats) and many others concerned by sociocultural implications (symbolic threats). Across three studies, we tested whether differing realistic and symbolic COVID-19 related threat perceptions varied along gender and political identity near the 2020 US Presidential Election. In all three studies, we found that realistic COVID-19 related threat perceptions were positively associated with a liberal political identity; this pattern did not vary by gender. In Studies 1 and 3, symbolic COVID-19 related threat perceptions were positively associated with a conservative political identity and also did not vary by gender. In Study 2, however, the association between symbolic threat and political identity did vary by gender. Symbolic COVID-19 related threat perceptions were positively associated with a conservative identity for men but not women; for women, threat and political identity were unrelated.     

The effect of culture and self‐construals on predispositions toward verbal communication

This study tested the effects of culture and self‐construals (i.e., independence and interdependence) on predispositions toward verbal communication. For the purpose of this study, we focused on two main areas of verbal communication predispositions: (a) communication apprehension and (b) argumentativeness. In our path model, we expected that culture‐level individualism increases one's construal of self as independent, which, in turn, leads to a higher degree of argumentativeness and a lower level of communication apprehension. We also expected that culture‐level individualism decreases one's construal of self as interdependent, which, in turn, leads to a lower degree of argumentativeness and a higher level of communication apprehension. Data to test the model were drawn from undergraduates (N=539) studying in Korea, Hawaii, and mainland U.S. The data were partially consistent with the theoretical predictions made. The implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.     

Financial resources and decisions to avoid information about environmental perils

Environmental perils pose threats that require mitigation. Mitigation requires knowledge of the threat. Ironically, people may opt to avoid information about an environmental peril, especially if they lack resources to respond and the mitigation burden is high or costly. Three experiments (N = 845) examined how available resources and the resource burden of responding to an environmental peril affect the perceived of burden of taking action, and how perceiving burden, in turn, affects avoidance of information about the threat. Experiments 1a and 1b revealed that lower perceived likelihood of taking action and low income predicted a greater tendency to avoid hurricane risk information among Florida residents. Experiment 2 examined receptivity to information about home radon levels and manipulated the burden required to make repairs ($200 vs. $2,000). Having low income and learning repairs were costly corresponded with greater perceived burden of taking action, which predicted a lower likelihood to repair and greater information avoidance. These findings demonstrate that facing a high mitigation burden and lacking resources can lead to remaining uninformed about risks posed by environmental perils. Remaining uninformed is problematic because it may increase people's vulnerability to damage from these threats. However, these findings also identify a potential pathway for intervention. Reminding people of resources they may be unaware of will likely increase their likelihood of preparation and decrease information avoidance.