This researcher wanted to better understand the ways to gain compliance for people to stay at home, wear a mask, and social distance. He used Moral Foundations Theory, which states that people judge the “rightness” or “wrongness” of behaviors along with five different moral concerns or “foundations.”
The first is whether an action shows you care; the second is whether an action upholds standards of equality; the third is whether it shows loyalty to the group; the fourth is whether it shows deference to authority, and the last is whether it conforms to impulses and the natural way of doing things.
His research was conducted in April 2020 so the entire enterprise was still new to many Americans. Nonetheless, respondents generally associated mask-wearing with “caring” and “equality”. There were some age differences. Naturally, younger adults felt that wearing a mask and staying at home went against their “nature.” Older adults, on the other hand, felt that all three behaviors show a greater value placed on communal goals and public health over personal comfort.
Understand the basis for belief and subsequent behavior is instrumental to crafting messages that move people. Then again, the hardest, most expensive thing in communication is to get an adult human being to change their mind.