2020/06/16 by Valerio Capraro, Hélène Barcelo, Capraro, Valerio +1
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts #COVID-19 and Mental Health #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.11273
arxiv created 2020/06/16 · openalex publication_date 2020/06/16 · arxiv updated 2020/06/22 · openalex created_date 2022/07/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Finding mechanisms to promote the use of face masks is fundamental during the second phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response, when shelter-in-place rules are relaxed and some segments of the population are allowed to circulate more freely. Here we report three pre-registered studies (total N = 1,920), using an heterogenous sample of people living in the USA, showing that priming people to "rely on their reasoning" rather than to "rely on their emotions" significantly increases their intentions to wear a face covering. Compared to the baseline, priming reasoning promotes intentions to wear a face covering, whereas priming emotion has no significant effect. These findings have theoretical and practical implications. Practically, they offer a simple and scalable intervention to promote intentions to wear a face mask. Theoretically, they shed light on the cognitive basis of intentions to wear a face covering.