People perceive themselves to adhere more strictly to COVID-19 guidelines than others

ABSTRACT

People have a fair idea of how they are supposed to behave to slow down the spread of COVID-19. But what about people’s perception of their own compared to others’ adherence to the guidelines? Building on prior research on self-enhancement biases, we predicted that people perceive themselves to adhere more strictly to the COVID-19 guidelines than others. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a large-scale online experiment (N = 1,102), using a sample from four countries (UK, US, Germany, Sweden). As predicted, people perceived themselves to adhere to the COVID-19 guidelines more strictly than both the average citizen of their country and their close friends. These findings were robust across countries. Furthermore, findings were not moderated by whether people first thought about themselves or about others. In conclusion, our study provides a robust demonstration of how a long-standing psychological effect perseveres, even during a once-in-a-lifetime health crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• better-than-average-effect
• holier-than-thou effect
• self-enhancement
• social comparison

Acknowledgments

The research was funded by a grant from the University of Hildesheim.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Hildesheim [N/A].