Has COVID-19 Threatened Relational Identity? Risk Representation, Identity Threats, and Perceived Health during Quarantine

ABSTRACT

Based on the Identity Process Theory, this study wondered whether COVID-19 risk representation threatened relational identity and health perception. A sample of 976 Italian university students (M_age = 24.2; females: 73.8%) and a sample of 204 university staff members (M_age = 50.86; females: 57.4%) completed an online survey during the 1^st phase of COVID-19. The results confirmed that in both samples the COVID-19 risk representation has been related to participants’ identity, both activating identity protection strategies and threatening their relational identity, i.e., the identity they derived from family and friendship relationships. Furthermore, identity protection mediated the relation between risk representation and health perception, suggesting that to feel even more part of their family and friend groups can protect participants from feeling unhealthy.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• risk representation
• relational identity
• identity threat
• health perception

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Open Science Framework at https://mfr.osf.io/render?url=https%3A%2F%2Fosf.io%2Fc96xp%2Fdownload.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

This study was approved by the Data Protection Officer of the University of Parma, Italy. The participants provided their informed consent to participate in this study participate in the study by clicking ‘yes, I agree to participate’ (or ‘no’) at the end of the informed consent form.

Notes

1. Data being analyzed in this article are collected through a questionnaire which also contained: a) a part aimed at collecting the images associated with COVID-19 through the stimulus words technique; and b) a part aimed at detecting information on COVID-19 possessed by the participants. The data relating to these two parts will not be considered in this study but are available on request from the corresponding author.

2. Socio-Economic Status (SSE) was measured asking participants to indicate on a five-point Likert-type scale how much they think their family’s income adequate for their needs: 1 = totally inadequate, 5 = totally adequate.