April 7 (UPI) — People may take fewer COVID-19 safety precautions when they are with friends as opposed to acquaintances or strangers, a study published Thursday by the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied found.
In multiple experiments, people engaged in fewer health protection behaviors when the COVID-19 infection risk was associated with close friendships, the researchers said.
This included situations in which people thought of a friend while reading COVID-19-related news, believed a friend was the source of a prior COVID-19 infection or noted a friend’s presence while dining at an indoor restaurant, according to the researchers.
In all of these scenarios, study participants decided to purchase fewer health protection items, such as masks and hand sanitizers, and believed they were less likely to get infected, even in crowds, the researchers said.
“Friends and family can provide a sense of comfort, but it’s irrational and dangerous to believe they will protect you from being infected by COVID-19,” study co-author Hyunjung Crystal Lee said in a press release.
“This tendency that we call the ‘friend-shield effect’ could intensify a false sense of safety and contribute to future infections,” said Lee, an assistant professor of marketing at the Carlos III of Madrid University in Spain.
Previous studies and surveys have found that people’s social and political views often drive their behaviors with regard to masking and social distancing during the pandemic.
However, for this study, Lee and hear colleagues conducted five online experiments with adults in the United States.
In an experiment with 495 participants, one group was asked to write down memories of a close friend while the other group wrote about a distant acquaintance, the researchers said.
All participants then read a news article stating that unhealthy snacks can increase risks of more severe COVID-19 infection symptoms, while the use of hand sanitizers, face masks and disinfecting wipes can reduce the likelihood of infection, according to the researchers.
The participants then chose either a junk food item such as candy bars or chips or a health protection product such as a face mask, hand sanitizer or disinfecting wipes from an online store.
Participants who wrote about a close friend were more likely to pick junk food over a health protection product compared with those who wrote about a distant acquaintance, the researchers said.
In another experiment, Lee and her colleagues divided 262 participants with no history of COVID-19 infection into three groups and told them to imagine they had been infected with COVID-19 either by a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger.
Participants were then asked how much they planned to spend on health protection products over the next two months, the researchers said.
Those who imagined infection by a friend planned to spend less than half as much on health protection items, $9.28 on average, than those who imagined infection by an acquaintance, $18.84 on average, or a stranger, $21.36 on average, the data showed.
An additional experiment involved 109 participants who had been previously infected with COVID-19 and knew the source of their infection, according to the researchers.
Participants infected by friends or family members were less likely to think they would get infected again compared with those previously infected by acquaintances or strangers, the researchers said.
In another study experiment, researchers divided 301 participants into three groups whose members were told to imagine they were going to a coffee shop either alone, with a friend or with an acquaintance.
Participants then were asked about how crowded they expected the coffee shop to be and about their political orientation, the researchers said.
Those who identified as political conservatives expected the coffee shop to be less crowded, and thus estimated a lower likelihood of COVID-19 infection if they were going with a friend rather than an acquaintance or on their own, according to the researchers.
There was no similar association for participants who identified as political liberals, they said.
Based on these findings, COVID-19 public health campaigns should caution against individuals’ tendency to engage in less protective behaviors when the infection risk is associated with friends and family, the researchers said.
Health campaigns also should consider tailoring messages for different audiences, such as political conservatives or liberals, they said.
“We think health safety campaigns should make greater efforts to inform the public regarding the friend-shield effect,” study co-author Eline De Vries said in a press release.
They should “aim for a more holistic response to future pandemics by taking both physical infection rates and psychological risk perceptions into account,” said De Vries, an associate professor of marketing at the Carlos III of Madrid University in Spain.