TY  - JOUR
A1  - Nachtwey, Paul
A1  - Walther, Eva
T1  - Survival of the fittest in the pandemic age: Introducing disease-related social Darwinism
T2  - PLoS ONE
N2  - COVID-19 was a harsh reminder that diseases are an aspect of human existence and mortality. It was also a live experiment in the formation and alteration of disease-related attitudes. Not only are these attitudes relevant to an individual’s self-protective behavior, but they also seem to be associated with social and political attitudes more broadly. One of these attitudes is Social Darwinism, which holds that a pandemic benefits society by enabling nature “to weed out the weak”. In two countries (N = 300, N = 533), we introduce and provide evidence for the reliability, validity, and usefulness of the Disease-Related Social Darwinism (DRSD) Short Scale measuring this concept. Results indicate that DRSD is meaningful related to other central political attitudes like Social Dominance Orientation, Authoritarianism and neoliberalism. Importantly, the scale significantly predicted people’s protective behavior during the Pandemic over and above general social Darwinism. Moreover, it significantly predicted conservative attitudes, even after controlling for Social Dominance Orientation.
Y1  - 2023
UR  - https://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2099
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:385-1-20993
VL  - 2023
IS  - Band 18, Heft 3
PB  - Public Library of Science (PLoS)
CY  - San Francisco
ER  -