Political beliefs and legitimacy of government restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic

Palace, M ORCID: 0000-0003-3016-2118, Madan, M, May, B, Smith, L, Daly, S, Terbeck, S ORCID: 0000-0003-0417-7527 and Jacobson, T Political beliefs and legitimacy of government restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Behavioral Sciences. ISSN 2076-328X (Accepted)

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Abstract

The current paper examines how individual/personality factors are associated with political legitimacy of government restrictions at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 1262 US-based participants completed an online survey comprising several scales (predictor factors), such as the Just World Scale (Lucas et al., 2011), Political Ideology Scale. the Police Legitimacy Scale (Tankebe et al., 2016), as well as the Authoritarianism Scale measuring aggression, submission, and conventionalism (Dunwoody & Funke, 2016). In addition, they completed scales measuring their Fear of COVID and Perceptions of Government (outcome factors). The results suggest that those who viewed the president or federal government most responsible had lower legitimacy scores than those who re-ported their governor, state government, or local official or government to be responsible. Also, those who aligned with the Republican party had the lowest mean for fear of COVID, while the highest was in the ‘"Other" political affiliation, followed by the Democrats who had the second highest. It also turned out that whereas the relationships with those who have been hospitalized or died as a result of COVID and individual risk factors for COVID were not significant variables in predicting perceptions of the federal government’s handling of the pandemic, the most significant factors were Authoritarianism, Fear of COVID-19, (older) Age, Change in Federal Trust and Political Ideology. Fear of COVID-19 was the only significant factor predicting government legitimacy and individual decisions to engage in protection measures during the pandemic. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1701 Psychology; 1702 Cognitive Sciences; 3202 Clinical sciences; 5202 Biological psychology; 5203 Clinical and health psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Divisions:	Psychology (from Sep 2019)
Publisher:	MDPI AG
Date of acceptance:	11 May 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	22 May 2026
Date Deposited:	22 May 2026 14:35
Last Modified:	22 May 2026 15:06
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28625

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