People find it justified to condemn those who do not keep a distance to others in public & blame ordinary citizens for the severity of the pandemic; predictors are age, behavioral change, social trust, & trust in the government

Bor, Alexander, Marie F. Lindholt, Frederik J. Jørgensen, and Michael Bang Petersen. 2020. “Moralizing Physical Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic -- Personal Motivations Predict Moral Condemnation.” PsyArXiv. December 12. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3rczg

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1337699934783594498

Abstract: Physical distancing is a crucial aspect of most countries’ strategies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. However, keeping distance to others in public requires significant changes in conduct and behavior relative to ordinary circumstances. Throughout history, an effective strategy to make people engage in such behavioral change has been to morally condemn those who do not behave in an appropriate way. Accordingly, here, we investigate whether physical distancing has emerged as a moralized issue during the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially explaining the massive changes in behavior that have occurred across societies to halter the spread of the pandemic. Specifically, we utilize time-sensitive, representative survey evidence from eight Western democracies to examine the extent to which people (1) find it justified to condemn those who do not keep a distance to others in public and (2) blame ordinary citizens for the severity of the pandemic. The results demonstrate that physical distancing has indeed become a moral issue in most countries in the early phases of the pandemic. Furthermore, we identify the most important predictors of moralization to be age, behavioral change, social trust, and trust in the government. Except for minor differences, this pattern is observed within all countries in the sample. While moralization was high during the first wave of the pandemic, temporal analyses also indicate that moralization is lower in the second wave of the pandemic, potentially making it more difficult to engage in sufficient behavioral changes.

Check also Participants evaluated the same costs (public shaming, deaths & illnesses, & police abuse of power) as more acceptable when they resulted from efforts to minimize C19's health impacts, than when they resulted from prioritizing economic costs:

Moralization of Covid-19 health response: Asymmetry in tolerance for human costs. Maja Graso, Fan Xuan Chen, Tania Reynolds. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, December 4 2020, 104084. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/12/participants-evaluated-same-costs.html