People who supported their government’s pandemic restrictions such as masks, quarantines and social distancing were also more likely to believe that people who got sick with COVID-19 deserved it, according to a new study.
Researchers in Japan looked at the idea of “belief in just deserts” — the idea that someone’s poor choice meant that a bad thing should happen to them — and how that related to the general attitudes about COVID-19 infections.
“The results were surprising,” Michio Muraki, the study’s lead author from Osaka University, said in a news release. “We found that individuals who strongly agreed with government restrictions on individual behavior during public emergencies were more likely to believe in just deserts.