Social distancing: Identity, perceived reality and policy preferences under pandemic threat

Extreme crises hold the potential to unite societies, but also to deepen sociopolitical divisions. The ability of societies to choose unity over divide depends on political leadership, pre-crisis inter-group relations, and on the behavior – real and perceived – of these groups during the crisis. This paper asks how does social identity affect the perception of an outgroup’s situation under a common threat. We utilize the fact that the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has hit Israel’s regions and social groups unevenly, and thus has created differences in groups’ morbidity rates – for studying perceptions of ingroup and outgroup morbidity. We find that minority groups tend to overestimate outgroup morbidity and underestimate ingroup morbidity, especially when they themselves are characterized by high morbidity rates. These perceptions are partly debiased when people are asked to reflect on their situation. In addition, we find that people support harsher policy toward implied non-compliers, but also that biased perceptions do not translate into biased policy preferences. The importance of our findings lies in suggesting that perceptions of outgroup’s situation can reflect intergroup relations, but may also trigger further deterioration in social divide at times of extreme crises.