Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The global outbreak of COVID-19 has caused severe physical and economic damage. The extent of damage differs across countries, and is relatively small in Japan. This study investigated the predictors of infection prevention behavior among Japanese people and attempted to understand why the damage in Japan was less compared to other countries. We explored the following predictions: (1) people who perceive higher COVID-19 risks will engage in infection prevention behaviors regardless of their perceived norms; and (2) people who perceive lower risks for COVID-19 will engage in infection prevention only when they perceive infection prevention behavior as a social norm. We conducted two studies by recruiting 1,588 and 339 participants for studies 1 and 2, respectively. In Study 1, as an indicator of the perceived infection risk, we measured whether participants had been vaccinated, assuming that unvaccinated people perceived COVID-19 to be low risk. In Study 2, we directly measured the perceived infection risk. The results were consistent with our predictions, suggesting that social norms promote infection prevention behavior, even among individuals who perceived COVID-19 as low risk. This may be one of the reasons for the relatively small COVID-19-related damage in Japan.