Gavan Fitzsimons

Politicization of COVID-19 health-protective behaviors in the United States: Longitudinal and cross-national evidence

PLoS ONE · 2021 · 134 citations

During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. conservative politicians and the media downplayed the risk of both contracting COVID-19 and the effectiveness of recommended health behaviors. Health behavior theories suggest perceived vulnerability to a health threat and perceived effectiveness of recommended health-protective behaviors determine motivation to follow recommendations. Accordingly, we predicted that-as a result of politicization of the pandemic-politically conservative Amer…

Intergenerational conflicts of interest and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic

Personality and Individual Differences · 2020 · 66 citations

= 58,641), and tested pre-registered hypotheses about how age relates to (a) perceived personal costs during the pandemic, (b) prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), and (c) support for behavioral regulations (e.g., mandatory quarantine, vaccination). We further tested whether the relation between age and prosocial COVID-19 responses can be explained by perceived personal costs during the pandemic. Overall, we found that older people perceived more costs of contracting the virus…

Predictors of adherence to public health behaviors for fighting COVID-19 derived from longitudinal data

Scientific Reports · 2022 · 62 citations

The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one's community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey (N = 3040), we test how infection risk perception, trust in the governmental response and communications about COVID-19, conspiracy beliefs, social norms on distancing, tightness of culture, and community punishment predict various containment-related attitudes and beha…

Better to Decide Together: Shared Consumer Decision Making, Perceived Power, and Relationship Satisfaction

Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2021 · 30 citations

Shared consumer decisions, particularly those made with a relationship partner, can be very different from decisions that are made alone. Across multiple studies, we investigate how shared consumer decision making affects perceptions of power and relationship satisfaction. We integrate two streams of research to create a novel theory about consumer decision making and perceived power. Specifically, we suggest that shared consumer decision making combines two necessary components of power—an indi…

Open Science Online Grocery: A Tool for Studying Choice Context and Food Choice

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · 2022-04-18 · 29 citations

The purpose of this article is to introduce a new tool—the Open Science Online Grocery—for studying the effects of the choice context on purchasing decisions. We first review the features of the tool: a mock online grocery store containing over 11,000 products wherein researchers can modify the choice context (e.g., positioning, labeling, suggestions) and observe resulting choice. Then, we present three studies illustrating how the tool can help assess how changes to labeling, ordering, and posi…