Public and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic – UK Constitutional Law Association

*Editors’ note – this post is part of a series on ‘The Rule of Guidance?’. The other posts in the series will be available here.

Across 2020 and 2021, the UK government introduced a large number of policies, rules, and guidance for the public in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of these sought to limit in-person contact between people, and so in effect restricted movement. 

In addition to the legal debate around these rules, some argued that a socio-legal analysis was needed. To me as a social psychologist, this means understanding the beliefs, motivations, and likely behaviours of the public in response both to the pandemic and to the measures taken against it. I will argue in this blogpost that an effective legal framework – and in particular, the extent to which authorities can rely on guidance rather than threats of coercion – requires a correct understanding of the psychology of the public in the pandemic. However, this correct understanding wasn’t always evident in the UK context.

From the early days of the pandemic, the UK government considered introducing punishments in the form of fines for certain forms of rule-breaking. In April 2020, SPI-B, the behavioural science subgroup of SAGE, argued against Government proposals for increasing financial penalties for people travelling beyond a 1km limit. There were a number of reasons why psychologists and others advising on public behaviour argued that such legal punishments were to be avoided if possible and that other approaches would be more effective. Some of these arguments and relevant evidence were collected in a short paper from Independent SAGE, in February 2021. In addition to arguments around inequalities (most of the proposed punishments would disproportionately affect lower income and disadvantaged people), there was the point that a coercive approach could backfire. There is evidence from previous public health emergencies in support of this argument.  For instance, in mass casualty decontamination for a chemical incident, coercion – shouting and attempts at force – have backfired, leading to less public engagement with the procedure. During the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in 2014, when the authorities used the military to enforce quarantine, this alienated the public from the campaign and again reduced engagement. Although these examples are different from fines, they have in common the assumption that the public needs to be forced or threatened to comply with a public health measure.

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was also other types of evidence on public behaviour and motivations that also helps us to address the effectiveness or otherwise of legal threats to compel engagement with public health measures. For most of the required behaviours, public adherence was at relatively high levels (~70%), according to the Office of National Statistics and other sources. For self-isolation, however, one of the measures for which there was a high-profile campaign of legal punishment (with threatened fines of up to £10,000), the pattern was different, with an adherence rate of only around 40%. Why was this? Research showed that there were a number of factors, including public (mis)understanding of the rules and perceived social norms. Two of the key predictors, however, were demographic and practical: people who adhered less were often low-paid and were those who had no support with their shopping. Even where people were motivated to comply, they did not feel able to do so. Thus the real solution was not further threats, but material and practical support (e.g., greater compensation for staying at home, assistance with shopping).

An early study published on this blog found that obligation to household, family, community, neighbours, and country were all important for most people as motivations for following the rules on  ‘lockdown’. Other studies carried out at the height of the pandemic found that a sense of solidarity, particularly with those most in need of support, were more important to people as motivations than legal mandates or fear of punishment.

Put together, this kind of evidence suggests that the UK government’s proclivity towards legal punishments and threats of coercion misunderstood the underlying psychology of the public in the context of the pandemic. Both here, as well as in assumptions such as ‘behavioural fatigue’, the government assumed a mentally and morally fragile public who would be an obstacle (rather than part of the solution) in the public health emergency response. Mental fragility is not the only model of the psychology of public behaviour in crises available to the UK government, however. The government’s own programme of ‘community resilience’ by contrast assumes that the public has the capacity to be part of  the solution in crises. There are decades of research evidence in line with this assumption: people often cooperate in the midst of emergencies, including with strangers, even when they feel in danger themselves.

Successful public health programmes work through public engagement, so it is important to understand the social psychology involved, including some relevant terms and concepts. On the one hand, there is compliance, which social psychologists define as counter-normative pressure from a psychological outgroup. Here, public health measures are done ‘to us’. On the other hand, there is conformity, which we define as normative and informational influence from an ingroup source. Here, the measures are taken ‘for us’ (or even‘with us’). Only in the second case will the public health intervention be internalised and owned, hence resulting in active public engagement.

Put differently, just as the reliance on legal enforcement and coercion can risk damaging the relationship between authorities and the public, an inclusive, trusting relationship between authorities and the public is the basis of greater public willingness to engage with public health measures, including rules or guidance that might limit movement and other personal freedoms. Public trust in the UK government declined over the course of the pandemic. There were specific incidents that caused this. One was the rule-breaking behaviour of government advisor Dominic Cummings. However, psychologists also argued that more generally the government’s assumptions that the public were untrustworthy led the authorities to treat people in ways that undermined the relationship, including undermining trust. By contrast, some other countries (including those that trusted their populations more than in the case of the UK) maintained high levels of trust, which was associated with higher levels of adherence.

Finally, I want to say a few words about the UK mask mandate, evidence on which might appear to conflict with some of the above arguments. The mandate, which was introduced in June 2020, certainly increased the wearing of face coverings, and when the mandate was dropped in July 2021, mask-wearing dipped (even though there was still a pandemic and protective behaviours were still needed). Though the mandate enabled fines, the issuing of fines was not common, which might be interpreted to mean that fines were not actually a major driver of behaviour (in line with the evidence mentioned earlier). Instead, what seems to have happened was that introducing the mandate around masking had an important signalling effect – it communicated to the public both the seriousness of the pandemic and society’s view on appropriate conduct. By the same token, dropping the mandate was one of a series of actions by the UK government that served to signal not to take the pandemic so seriously (actions which included the prime minster and others referring to July 19th 2021 as ‘freedom day’ and the supposed ‘end of lockdown’ ).

In conclusion, therefore, any proposal for the use of legal enforcement in pandemics needs to take into account the psychology of the public in crises. The evidence fits a psychology of capacity and collective resilience rather than inherent vulnerability and fragility. An inclusive relationship of trust and solidarity with the public can help promote engagement with potentially intrusive public health measures.  Finally, there is an important distinction between the use of laws to communicate social importance / social norms and the use of punishment or actual enforcement (which risks communicating a lack of trust in the public).

John Drury is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex and Director of Research in the School of Psychology. As part of the Covid-19 pandemic response, he participated in SPI-B (the behavioural science subgroup of SAGE), Independent SAGE, and the British Psychological Society task force on the pandemic.

(Suggested citation: J. Drury, ‘Get the psychology right for the law: Public and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (27th January 2025) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))

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