Priming reasoning increases intentions to wear a face covering to slow down COVID-19 transmission

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that priming individuals to rely on reasoning rather than emotion significantly increases their intentions to wear face coverings, offering a scalable intervention to promote mask usage during COVID-19.

Contribution

It provides evidence that reasoning priming boosts mask-wearing intentions, highlighting a practical intervention and advancing understanding of cognitive influences on health behaviors.

Findings

Priming reasoning increases mask-wearing intentions.

Priming emotion has no significant effect.

Study conducted with 1,920 participants across the USA.

Abstract

Finding mechanisms to promote the use of face masks is fundamental during the second phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response, when shelter-in-place rules are relaxed and some segments of the population are allowed to circulate more freely. Here we report three pre-registered studies (total N = 1,920), using an heterogenous sample of people living in the USA, showing that priming people to "rely on their reasoning" rather than to "rely on their emotions" significantly increases their intentions to wear a face covering. Compared to the baseline, priming reasoning promotes intentions to wear a face covering, whereas priming emotion has no significant effect. These findings have theoretical and practical implications. Practically, they offer a simple and scalable intervention to promote intentions to wear a face mask. Theoretically, they shed light on the cognitive basis of intentions to wear a face covering.