Seen and Not Seen: How People Judge Ambiguous Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic

51 Pages Posted: 14 Jun 2021 Last revised: 1 Sep 2022

See all articles by Andras Molnar

Andras Molnar

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

Alexander Moore

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

Carman Fowler

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

George Wu

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

Date Written: August 31, 2022

Abstract

How do we judge others’ behavior when they are both seen and not seen—when we observe their behavior but not the underlying traits or history that moderate the perceived riskiness of their behavior? We investigate this question in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: How people make sense of, and judge, vaccination-contingent behaviors—behaviors, such as going to the gym or a bar, which are considered to be more or less risky and appropriate, depending on the target’s vaccination status. While decision theoretic models suggest that these judgments should depend on the probability that the target is vaccinated (e.g., the positivity of judgments should increase linearly with the probability of vaccination), in a large-scale preregistered experiment (N = 936) we find that both riskiness and appropriateness judgments deviate substantially from such normative benchmarks. Specifically, when participants judge a stranger’s behavior, without being asked to think about the stranger’s vaccination status, they tend to judge these behaviors similarly positively to behaviors of others who are known to be fully vaccinated. By contrast, when participants are explicitly prompted to think about the vaccination status of others, they do so, leading them to view others more disparagingly, at times even more negatively than what a normative benchmark would imply. More broadly, these results suggest new directions for research on how people respond to risk and ambiguity. We demonstrate that even subtle cues can fundamentally alter what information is “top of mind”, that is, what information is included or excluded when making judgments.

Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, ambiguity, uncertainty, vaccination status, attributions

JEL Classification: D81, D91, I12, I18

Suggested Citation

Molnar, Andras and Moore, Alexander and Fowler, Carman and Wu, George, Seen and Not Seen: How People Judge Ambiguous Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic (August 31, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3859515 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3859515

Andras Molnar (Contact Author)

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 S Woodlawn Ave
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

Alexander Moore

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 S Woodlawn Ave
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

Carman Fowler

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 S Woodlawn Ave
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

George Wu

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

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