Replication Data for: Symptoms and Stereotypes: Perceptions and Responses to Covid-19 in Malawi and Zambia

Replication materials for the manuscript, Symptoms and Stereotypes: Perceptions and Responses to Covid-19 in Malawi and Zambia.

ABSTRACT:

A large literature documents Covid-19's health and economic effects. We focus
instead on its political impact, and its potential to exacerbate identity divisions,
in particular. Psychologists argue that contagious disease increases threat perceptions and provokes policing of group boundaries. We explore how insider-outsider
status and symptoms of illness shape perceptions of infection, reported willingness to help, and desire to restrict free movement of an ailing neighbor using
a phone-based survey experiment administered three times in two neighboring
African countries during different stages of the pandemic: Malawi, from May 5 to
June 2, 2020 (n=4,641); Zambia, from July 2 to August 13, 2020 (n=2,198); and
Malawi again, from March 9 to May 1, 2021 (n=4,356). We study identities that
are salient in Malawi and Zambia but have not induced signifcant prior violence,
making our study a relatively hard test of disease threat theories. We find that
symptoms more strongly shape perceptions and projected behavior than insider-
outsider status in both countries and across time, suggesting that there are limits
to the ability of pandemics to independently provoke identity politics de novo.