Sustaining Livelihoods or Saving Lives? Economic System Justification in the Time of COVID-19.

An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, "What about the risk to human life?" Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern "What about people's livelihoods and individual freedoms?" A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional government intervention in the free-market economy. We examine these lay beliefs among US residents in four studies and find that economic system justification (ESJ), an ideology that defends the prevailing economic system when under threat, is a reliable psychological predictor beyond political ideology. Specifically, compared to those who scored low on ESJ, people who scored high on ESJ judged China as more justified in downplaying the spread of virus to protect its interest in the global free-market economy, supported in-person over online learning, viewed shelter in place as less desirable, and perceived the opening of the Texas economy as more legitimate. We also find that multiple psychological mechanisms might be at work-resistance to market interventions, perceived legitimacy of opening the economy, perceived seriousness of the health crisis, and violation of human rights. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10551-022-05091-4.

Perceived financial constraints and normative influence: discretionary purchase decisions across cultures.

Five studies examine how perceived financial constraints and abundance determine when consumers will engage in solitary or social purchases. When financially constrained, consumers prefer solitary (vs. social) purchases. We also identify self-construal as a moderator of how consumers spend their discretionary income. While independent consumers prefer solitary (vs. social) purchases, interdependent consumers prefer social (vs. solitary) purchases. Interestingly, when consumers have adequate discretionary income, independent as well as interdependent consumers have similar preferences for solitary and social purchases. In addition, for interdependent consumers, communal norms mediate the preference for social purchases. Finally, for independent consumers, making the communal norm salient reverses their preference for solitary purchases, resulting in a preference for social purchases. Our findings suggest how managers can effectively promote different types of purchases under varying financial resource conditions in their global communication strategy. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11747-021-00814-x.

Selective assessment and positivity bias in environmental valuation.

The need to determine the value of environmental entities has generated substantial research regarding optimal methods for obtaining valuations from survey respondents. The literature suggests the importance of providing clear, complete descriptions of the entity being valued prior to respondents indicating their valuations. The target entity's attributes are often presented in isolation or in greater detail compared with other entities. Two experiments were conducted to explore whether selective exposure to and assessment of an environmental entity can bias survey respondents' judgments. This article adds to the environmental valuation literature by demonstrating a new process that leads to value overestimates. Specifically, the article shows that (a) when an environmental entity is the focus of assessment in a survey, positively biased evaluations often result; (b) positivity bias in evaluation translates to real monetary allocation decisions; and (c) selective information processing contributes to these effects.