The Changing Moral Environment—A Three-Wave Study Testing Four Moral Theories and the Fear of COVID-19 in Predicting Compliance with Behavioral Guidelines on COVID-19, Moralization Toward Non-Compliance, and Vaccination

Governments across the globe imposed behavioral restrictions to halt the spread of the COVID-19. These preventive behaviors became a moralized issue and engagement in those behaviors varied. In moral psychology, there are various theoretical frameworks with measures of individual differences that concern the way we form moral judgments. In a pre-registered longitudinal three-wave project started before the pandemic, we examined the predictive power of several moral measures on compliance with behavioral guidelines, moralization toward noncompliance, and intention to vaccinate and actual vaccine uptake. Mature integrative and deliberative moral thinking predicted moralization and compliance better than several measures of utilitarianism. These results hold when controlling for Fear of Covid-19 and sociodemographic factors.