Public opinion around the COVID-19 pandemic reflects partisan polarization and individual dispositions such as ideology and worldviews. This Kilmer Lab project expands on previous research by examining how the pandemic influences political attitudes. Drawing on terror management theory, we test the possibility that prompting someone to think about the implications of becoming ill with COVID-19 will make them more likely to adopt attitudes that reflect their worldviews. We hypothesize that exposure to a reminder of either the pandemic or of one’s own mortality will result in more positive views of immigrants among those low in social dominance orientation (SDO) and more negative views among those high in SDO compared to a control group. The hypothesis is tested with an experiment embedded in a June 2022 national sample survey (N=1518) of American adults. We conclude that pandemics, like other existential threats, can increase worldview polarization even in a politically polarized society
