Peer and social decision-making predictors of adherence to COVID-19 social distancing rules in adolescents in England

Giacomo Bignardi, Saz Ahmed, Marc Patrick Bennett, Darren Lee Dunning, Kirsty Griffiths, Ashok Sakhardande, Jovita Tung Leung, Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer, Willem Kuyken and Tim Dalgleish
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Marc Patrick Bennett: University of Cambridge
Jovita Tung Leung: University College London
Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer: University College London

No k3eq6, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments worldwide to introduce social distancing measures, including school closures and restrictions on in-person socialising. However, adherence to social distancing was challenging for many, and particularly for adolescents, for whom social interaction is crucial for development. The current study aimed to identify individual-level predictors of adherence to social distancing in a longitudinal sample of 460 adolescents aged 11-20 years. Participants completed detailed pre-pandemic assessments, including mental health and well-being, altruism, delayed reward discounting, rejection sensitivity, prosociality and susceptibility to prosocial and anti-social influence. Bayesian ordinal regression models were used to predict adherence to social distancing from predictors. The results indicated that higher levels of prosociality, altruism and lower susceptibility to anti-social influence were associated with higher adherence to social distancing. These findings have implications for understanding how adolescents comply with public health guidelines, highlighting the role of social influence and peer norms.

Date: 2023-06-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:k3eq6

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/k3eq6

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