The paper shows the role of mental health and political views in attributing responsibility for COVID-19 incidence rates to the government and factors beyond government control. Authors' hypotheses draw on the classic and new versions of attribution theories, on literature from political psychology about the process of blaming the government for natural catastrophes, and also on local socio-political specifics (political polarization). The empirical data used in the article come from the survey carried out on-line via a professional research panel at the turn of May and June 2020, after about three months of lockdown, and during the presidential election campaign. The research sample included 850 Polish adults (aged 18 to 84) fully diversified in terms of gender, age, and education (the sample was representative for the Polish population in terms of respondents' place of residence and the country's region). To measure attribution of responsibility, the authors developed an 8-item instrument. Half of the instrument’s items indicate government and state institutions' responsibility and half describe circumstances not related to the government. The results showed that the respondents tended to attribute more responsibility for COVID-19 effects to the government than other ("non-government") factors. In explaining the government's responsibility, political views and party preferences play an incomparably more significant role than mental health symptoms. The authors interpret these results as the effect of attitudinal and affective political polarization of Polish society.
The authors argue that responsibility for COVID-19 incidence rates can be attributed to government activity and factors beyond government control. Two categories have been identified among the potential reasons for attributing responsibility: mental health and political views/party preferences. The results showed that respondents tend to attribute more responsibility for COVID-19 effects to the government than other ("non-government") factors. In explaining the government's responsibility, political views and party preferences play an incomparably more significant role than mental health symptoms.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a difficult time for citizens due to the threat to physical health and because government restrictions related to physical distancing and lockdown can lead to deep frustration of some basic human needs (autonomy, relatedness, security). In the beginning, societies experience an "epidemic of fear"; the next step is an "epidemic of explanations": social (naive, lay) interpretations of responsibility for the disease's spread (
Our study addressed the issue of "naive explanations" of the responsibility for COVID-19 incidence rates in Polish society. It is essential to note that our society is strongly politically divided, and the study was conducted during the presidential electoral campaign. In today’s Poland, the division into liberals and communitarians seems to be the most salient dimension of the political polarization (
This paper aims to look at factors explaining responsibility for the COVID-19 incidence rates due to two categories of responsibility: 1) as attributed to government/authorities, and 2) as attributed to 'non-governmental' factors, i.e., beyond the control of authorities (e.g., characteristics of the virus, citizens' behavior). The process of attribution of responsibility to the government allows individuals to make sense of the world. It is necessary to form causal beliefs and some normative judgments about politics, politicians, and the political system (
Based on the classic attribution theories (e.g.,
Social perceptions of the government's responsibility for such collective experiences as the COVID-19 spread express citizens' deeper attitudes and expectations towards the government and social trust (
Blaming the government and the system is also one of the responses to the perception of individual failure (
Responsibility is one of the central moral concepts in social relationships. The attribution of blame and responsibility to public officials and to government is a cornerstone of democratic politics (
The “outcomes” of the COVID-19 pandemic, and restrictions associated with it, are severe and varied. The psychological costs that citizens pay during an epidemic or other natural catastrophe tend to be perceived as more dependent on governmental policies than on ordinary people's behavior and accidental impersonal factors (
Classic research on responsibility attribution did not take into account an actor’s role in the power hierarchy. Nevertheless, those studies seem to show some important bases for prediction concerning an actor’s position in the power hierarchy as a predictor of responsibility attribution. Researchers from the field of attribution theory pointed out that behavior is seen as internally caused when external forces are not very powerful, and when the ability to withstand external forces is high (
But this is not all that is proposed by social psychology, and a sociological approach to responsibility attribution. The general statement based on empirical evidence goes as follows: roles may be a necessary component of responsibility judgments. In modern societies, role-attributed responsibility is related to the opinion that higher prestige jobs, or social roles in bureaucratic authority, demand more accountability. High-prestige roles - those with major responsibility - entail expectations that the occupant will fulfill, diffuse and internalize obligations to act or oversee others' actions.
As stated earlier, people who experience a deterioration of their well-being (experiencing symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression) during an epidemic period, can feel especially helpless and look for greater support from the government and health care institutions (
H1. Citizens tend to attribute greater responsibility for COVID-19 incidence rates to the government than to non-governmental factors.
H2. Mental health symptoms (general well-being, anxiety, depression, and stress) during the epidemic period are related to the level of responsibility attributed to the government: the lower the mental health and personal well-being self-descriptions, the higher the responsibility attributed to the government for COVID-19 incidence rates.
We assumed that blaming government for the COVID-19 effects could be caused by the country's political situation. When society is strongly politically divided, and political polarization among citizens is salient, we can expect that political party preferences may be strongly associated with the level of responsibility for pandemic effects attributed to the government. Polish society is politically polarized: the last election (July 2020) showed that 51% of Poles supported the incumbent president (who represented the ruling party), and 49% voted for the candidate who represented the opposition. In strongly politically divided society, citizens may blame some political leaders, or the government as a whole, not only on account of its real effectiveness or strategy of coping with COVID-19. They can also rely on existing political attachments and blame politicians of the opposite party. For example,
According to the Terror Management Theory (TMT), reminding people of their mortality induces an existential threat that also leads to an increased need for protection provided by worldview-based beliefs. People want others to comply with their cultural worldview. Existential threat can increase some political polarization processes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it may lead to treating own political orientation and party preferences as essential cues in the attribution of responsibility for effects of COVID-19 to the government or non-government factors (c.f.
As
The division into communitarians and liberals reflects two dominant forms of political beliefs: 1) cultural rightism with economic leftism; and 2) cultural leftism with economic rightism (
On one side of the Polish socio-political polarization, we can observe very consolidated supporters of the current ruling party (PiS), characterized by relatively high communitarianism and anti-liberalism. On the other side, opposition supporters are much more dispersed, manifesting moderate or relatively high liberalism and rather low communitarianism (
Further, one of the essential products of differences between liberal and communitarian orientations seems to be the difference in perceptions of the rule of law. This principle should be the foundation of a liberal political community. In contrast, the fundamental principle of a communitarian political community is the priority of collective goals and interests over individual ones. Therefore, people of a liberal orientation seem more sensitive to potential violations of the rule of law than people of a communitarian orientation. Consequently, compared to communitarians, for liberals, the rule of law should be a much more important criterion in assessing politicians and political authorities’ actions.
In sum, our hypotheses focus on three very closely related aspects of the political attitudes that create the main lines of polarization: 1) individual orientations towards the political community (liberal
H3. Individual orientation towards the political community is related to the responsibility attributed to the government for COVID-19 incidence rates. The stronger the liberal orientation, the greater the responsibility of the government, and the lower the importance of non-governmental factors; whereas the stronger the communitarian orientation, the lower the responsibility of government, and the higher the importance of non-governmental factors;
H4. Individual perception of the government’s attitude towards the rule of law is related to the level of responsibility attributed to the government for COVID-19 incidence rates. The stronger the individual perception of the government as breaking down the rule of law (in the state), the greater the responsibility attributed to the government for the effects of COVID-19;
H5. Individual political preferences are related to the level of responsibility attributed to the government for the effects of COVID-19. People who declare voting for the ruling party attribute a lower level of responsibility to the government than other party electorates.
The sample consisted of
The final sample consisted of
The research was carried out at the turn of May and June, during the third month of lockdown. It was also a month before the presidential election, which took place on June 28th, after the change of the original date from May 10th.
We used the short form of the Mental Health Continuum questionnaire (MHC–SF) and Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) to assess mental health. MHC-SF, a tool developed by
The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) (
A 32-item scale to measure the preference for the liberal or communitarian political community was developed by
The instrument aimed to assess the level of satisfaction with the rule of law in Poland was developed by Skarżyńska. It consisted of 5 questions concerning such aspects of the rule of law as: 1) whether the mandates issued by the police correspond to the seriousness of the offense; 2) impartiality of the courts; 3) careful lawmaking; 4) legality of the decisions made by the government; and 5) protection of medical confidentiality (responses from 1 –
Respondents were asked about their voting preferences (‘Which political party would you vote for, if the parliamentary elections were held this Sunday?’). Participants could choose from: 1) Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice), 2) Koalicja Obywatelska (Civic Coalition), 3) Lewica Razem (Left Together), 4) Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish Peasant Party), 5) Konfederacja (Confederation), and 6) other parties.
Dependent variable: Responsibility for COVID-19 incidence rate. The instrument examining attribution of responsibility for COVID-19 incidence rate in Poland, developed by Skarżyńska, contained 8 questions. Four of them referred to the responsibility of government and state institutions: 1) poor organization of health care; 2) lack of adequate financial resources; 3) bad government policy; and 4) willingness to keep the government in power rather than to address the health of citizens. Another four items concerned circumstances not related to the government, such as: 1) the presence of foreigners from countries with high incidence rates; 2) properties of the virus; 3) disregard for restrictions imposed by the government; or 4) fate. Respondents were asked to assess on a 10-degree scale the extent to which the given circumstances or institutions contributed to the incident rate (from 1-minimum to 10-maximum). Internal reliability of the 4-item subscale regarding government responsibility was α = .84, while 4 items concerning responsibility attributed to non-government factors were less coherent. We decided to treat it as a separate dimension, despite the fact that the subscale's internal reliability was only approximately α = .60. Explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis was performed to confirm the empirical separateness of both factors. In an explanatory factor analysis, the first factor ‘governmental responsibility’ explained 35.7% of the total variance, whereas the second factor ‘non-governmental responsibility’ explained about 21%. In a confirmatory factor analysis, the two-dimensional model with 19 degrees of freedom showed acceptable goodness of fit (GFI = .940; SRMR = .041; RMSEA = .076).
Descriptive statistics and correlations are presented in
Variable | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Stress | |||||||||
2. Anxiety | .76** | ||||||||
3. Depression | .82** | .72** | |||||||
4. Well-being | -.48** | -.32** | -.62** | ||||||
5. Liberalism | .01 | -.03 | .02 | -.02 | |||||
6. Communitarianism | -.11** | -.11** | -.18** | .28** | .25** | ||||
7. Broken rule of law | .05 | -.04 | .07* | -.21** | .21** | -.20** | |||
8. Government responsibility | .09* | .07* | .12** | -.17** | .29** | -.18** | .49** | ||
9. Non-government responsibility | .08* | .11** | .04 | .02 | -.07* | .13* | -.15** | .17** | |
7.13 | 4.22 | 6.15 | 34.66 | 4.14 | 4.26 | 4.04 | 6.92 | 6.24 | |
4.78 | 4.26 | 5.22 | 15.15 | 0.68 | 0.70 | 0.99 | 2.23 | 1.61 | |
0-21 | 0-21 | 0-21 | 0-70 | 1-6 | 1-6 | 1-6 | 1-10 | 1-10 |
*
Government responsibility shows a positive correlation with liberal orientation and a negative correlation with communitarian orientation. On the other hand, non-government responsibility shows opposite correlations with both orientations (negative with liberalism and positive with communitarianism). The perception of breaking down the rule of law is strongly correlated with the level of government responsibility, and more weakly with the level of non-government responsibility.
Consistent with Hypothesis 1, the level of responsibility attributed to the government (
We found no significant differences between men and women in the level of government responsibility,
A hierarchical regression analysis was performed to verify whether individual differences in mental health and in political views predict the level of government and non-government responsibility attribution. The results are shown in
Predictor | Dependent variable |
|||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Government responsibility |
Non-government responsibility |
|||||||
Block 1 |
Block 1+2 |
Block 1 |
Block 1+2 |
|||||
β | β | β | β | |||||
7.17 (0.32)** | 1.89 (0.60)** | 5.83 (0.24)** | 6.04 (0.53)** | |||||
Stress | -0.04 | -0.02 (0.03) | -0.06 | -0.03 (0.02) | 0.07 | 0.02 (0.02) | 0.06 | 0.02 (0.02) |
Anxiety | 0.02 | 0.01 (0.03) | 0.09 | 0.05 (0.02)* | 0.13 | 0.05 (0.02)* | 0.11 | 0.04 (0.02)* |
Depression | 0.04 | 0.02 (0.03) | 0.05 | 0.02 (0.02) | -0.07 | -0.02 (0.02) | -0.07 | -0.02 (0.02) |
Well-being | -0.16 | -0.02 (0.01)** | 0.01 | 0.00 (0.05) | 0.05 | 0.01 (0.01) | -0.01 | 0.00 (0.01) |
Liberalism | 0.17 | 0.56 (0.10)** | -0.07 | -0.17 (0.09)* | ||||
Communitarianism | -0.10 | -0.31 (0.10)** | 0.14 | 0.33 (0.09)** | ||||
Broken rule of law | 0.28 | 0.64 (0.07)** | -0.08 | -0.13 (0.06)* | ||||
Non-votersa | 0.30 | 1.47 (0.18)** | 0.02 | 0.07 (0.16) | ||||
Opposition votersb | 0.40 | 1.79 (0.18)** | -0.07 | -0.21 (0.16) | ||||
Δ |
.35** | .04** | ||||||
56.4** | 6.0** | |||||||
.38 | .06 |
*
In the first block, symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression and well-being were entered. The model with government responsibility as a dependent variable turned out to be statistically significant,
In the next step, the second block of variables was entered into the regression equation. It included: liberal and communitarian orientations, evaluations of the rule of law, and electoral preferences. Two instrumental variables were created to test the hypothesis on whether electoral preferences predict attributions of responsibility. The hierarchical model with government responsibility attribution as the dependent variable was statistically significant,
The model with non-government responsibility as the dependent variable was also statistically significant, but it explained only 6% of the variance,
Based on the above results, we may conclude that Hypothesis 2 was only partly supported - the level of well-being is rather weakly but significantly related to the attribution of government responsibility, when individual differences are entered into the regression equation, but not in the final model including political worldview. Only the level of anxiety was significant in the second model. The predictive power of political worldview variables is stronger than individual differences in mental health. As predicted in Hypothesis 3, individual orientation towards political community is related to responsibility attributed to the government for COVID-19 incidence rate. Liberal orientation is positively related to the responsibility of the government and negatively related to the importance of the factors beyond the government’s control, whereas in the case of communitarian orientation the pattern of results turned out to be exactly the opposite. Also, Hypothesis 4 and 5 found full support in the results of the study. The stronger the individual perception of the government as breaking down the rule of law, the greater the responsibility attributed for the effects of COVID-19 to the government. Furthermore, compared to the ruling party’s followers, people not supporting the ruling party showed a substantial tendency to attribute a higher level of responsibility to the government.
In this article we have shown empirical evidence that people looking for some interpretations and explanations of the observed spread of COVID-19 effects tend to attribute a higher level of responsibility for epidemic effects to the government than to other situational factors (not related to governmental activities). It was also found that political views and preferences are incomparably better predictors of the level of responsibility attributed to the government than variables regarding mental health and well-being.
The first finding supports our Hypothesis 1, and is consistent with attribution theory (e.g.,
Our second major finding concerned empirical importance of some potential determinants of attributing responsibility to the government for spreading COVID-19. It shows an incomparably, more predictive role of political orientations and party preferences in comparison to the role of mental health and well-being. These results were generally consistent with research hypotheses, though they exceeded our expectations in terms of explanatory power. As we expected, individual liberal or communitarian orientation, perception of the breakdown of the rule of law, and party preferences were significantly related to the level of responsibility attributed to the government. Interpretation of the above results was based on the specificity of the analyzed political views (liberal and communitarian orientation), and the consequences of political polarization that are more salient during a pandemic (
Our results have shown that citizens' liberal political orientation is positively related to responsibility attribution to the government, but communitarian orientation is negatively related to blaming the government. It reflects not only polarization processes and a heuristic approach to attribution of responsibility but also some differences in values that are important for liberals and communitarians. A liberal political orientation means that citizens identify themselves as a group of private individuals united by an agreement to form a joint government. For liberals, individual freedom is the most important value, and they believe the state has no right to interfere in the sphere of citizens' everyday life. They did not support the ruling party in the last election, and nowadays, they do not accept government restrictions concerning the COVID-19 epidemic (
It is not easy to separate the two above described ways of attributing responsibility. They both can result from attitudinal and affective components of polarization (
We have supposed that the social perception of the government as responsible for COVID-19 incidence rates might be biased by individual differences in mental health characteristics like stress, anxiety, depression, and well-being. People who experience higher frustration of their essential needs feel more anxiety and a decrease in well-being. They may want more external help, and their expectations towards the government can even be excessive. Based on the classic theory of attribution (e.g.,
However, our results show that individual differences in mental health during the COVID-19 epidemic are incomparably much less significant in explaining the government responsibility attributions than some socio-political variables. This pattern could appear for two reasons. First, the level of anxiety related to the COVID-19 epidemic at the time of the study has decreased, and the level of well-being has increased compared to March this year (
The second reason could be the specific Polish political situation, i.e., intense attitudinal and affective polarization. Even the level of changes in anxiety during the lockdown was contingent on political preferences. For example, the ruling party’s supporters were less afraid of the financial crisis than the opposition's supporters (
The great importance of political polarization is visible at the level of general political orientations and declarations of voting in parliamentary elections. Though being the opposition voter is the most powerful predictor of attributing responsibility to the government. On the one side, party identification is the effect of liberal political orientation and implies voting preferences (liberals vote for liberal parties). On the other side, party preference may be the critical signal that citizens tend to use when they attribute COVID-19 to the government or non-government factors.
Another important issue taking into account responsibility attribution to the government and no-government factors is the rule of law. According to political scientists, modern liberal democracy is based on the assumption that all citizens are equal before the law and freedom is their inherent right (
In our study, we asked questions concerning five concrete (specific) situations where the rule of law could be broken down (such as, for example, a judge's impartiality or protection of medical confidentiality). The results we obtained highly supported our expectations: the stronger the individual perception of the government as breaking down the rule of law, the greater the government’s attributed responsibility for the effects of COVID-19. On the other hand, the government's weaker perception of breaking down the rule of law was related to a greater responsibility attributed to some non-governmental factors beyond the government's control.
These results are conclusive. Political polarization has a decisive impact on the perception of the government's responsibility for epidemic consequences. During the pandemic, the impact of polarization might have been further amplified by the mortality salience. This is also in line with other studies, which show that voters consider politicians responsible even for events beyond their actual control (e.g.,
Citizens seem to believe that "disasters are an excellent test of governmental performance" (
For this article, a dataset is freely available (
The following Supplementary Materials are available (for access see
Dataset
Codebook
The empirical part of this work was financed by the OPUS grant of the National Science Centre (Poland) UMO-2016/21/B/HS6/03213
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The authors have no support to report.