“Keep your distance for me”: A field experiment on empathy prompts to promote distancing during the COVID‐19 pandemic

• DOI: 10.1002/casp.2593
• Publication Date: 2021-12-07T13:59:19Z
• Authors: Denise de Ridder; Henk Aarts; Jeroen Benjamins; Marie‐Louise Gleb...; Hidde Leplaa; Paul Leseman; Renske Potgieter; Lars Tummers; Mariëlle Zonderva...
• Keywords: Social Psychology; Sociology and Political Science; case–control design; 3. Good health; behavioural public policy; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; field experiment; SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being; empathy; physical distancing; Research Articles

AbstractThe outbreak of COVID‐19 has turned out to be a major challenge to societies all over the globe. Curbing the pandemic requires rapid and extensive behavioural change to limit social interaction, including physical distancing. In this study, we tested the notion that inducing empathy for people vulnerable to the virus may result in actual distancing behaviour beyond the mere motivation to do so. In a large field experiment with a sequential case–control design, we found that (a) empathy prompts may increase distancing as assessed by camera recordings and (b) effectiveness of prompts depends on the dynamics of the pandemic and associated public health policies. In sum, the present study demonstrates the potential of empathy‐generating interventions to promote pro‐social behaviour and emphasizes the necessity of field experiments to assess the role of context before advising policy makers to implement measures derived from behavioural science. Please refer to Supplementary Material to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement