UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA FACULDADE DE PSICOLOGIA
INFORMAL AND FORMAL WORKLOAD AND RISK PERCEPTION: THE INTERVENING ROLE OF
AFFECT MODERATED BY GENDER
Ana Bárbara Amorim Sarroeira
MESTRADO INTEGRADO EM PSICOLOGIA
Área de Especialização em Cognição Social Aplicada
2021
UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA FACULDADE DE PSICOLOGIA
INFORMAL AND FORMAL WORKLOAD AND RISK PERCEPTION: THE INTERVENING ROLE OF
AFFECT MODERATED BY GENDER
Ana Bárbara Amorim Sarroeira
Dissertação orientada pela Professora Maria Manuela de Amorim Calheiros e coorientada pela Doutora Sandra Marisa da Silva Godinho
MESTRADO INTEGRADO EM PSICOLOGIA
Área de Especialização em Cognição Social Aplicada
2021
Agradecimentos
À professora Manuela Calheiros e Doutora Sandra Godinho agradeço não só pela orientação técnica e científica desta tese, como pelas oportunidades e aprendizagens que me
proporcionaram. Decerto não sou a mesma Ana que entrou na primeira reunião de tese há um ano atrás e decerto que grande parte deste crescimento deve-se à honestidade e informalidade com que me orientam.
À Doutora Carla Silva agradeço pelo suporte estatístico claro, sistemático e rigoroso.
Ao Professor José Manuel Palma agradeço por ensinar uma psicologia que me fez reconhecer o entusiasmo que sinto pela área.
Aos meus colegas de Psicologia Social e Cognitiva agradeço os momentos de tensão vividos em conjunto, os momentos de descompressão e a rede de apoio que montámos à volta de uma chaleira e café solúvel.
Aos membros do Ultimacto agradeço por preencherem aqueles anos de licenciatura com teatro, mas principalmente por me terem permitido aperfeiçoar o meu paladar clandestino-nepalês.
À Bia e à Mariana agradeço pelo companheirismo diário na descoberta de mais razões para não tomar atenção ou não ir às aulas. Viva os tsums e banhos de sol no lago da faculdade. Valeu a pena.
Ao João agradeço pelas conversas fluídas e sem ideias construídas, pelos processos criativos e por ter colorido estes anos de faculdade.
À Mariana (Margarida/Madalena) agradeço por ter enchido os momentos de maior tensão académica com bons álbuns de música, boa concentração e nutrição. Obrigada pelo conforto e cuidado.
Ao Afonso agradeço pela calma e apoio, mesmo quando sou a personificação do caos e do desapego. És o sítio aonde posso explodir, respirar e rir-me ao mesmo tempo. Obrigada.
À minha família agradeço por aguentarem o meu mau humor. Agora já podem voltar a fazer barulho na casa sem receberem olhares de reprovação.
Abstract
A common finding among risk perception studies is that, comparatively to men, women express higher risk perceptions. Aiming to go beyond a generic description of gender effects on risk representations, we examined the indirect effect of informal and formal roles on risk perceptions through a mediation of affect, with all associations moderated by gender. To fulfill such goal COVID-19 pandemic crisis presented the perfect scenario.Participants (N=607) were asked to report changes in informal (household and relational tasks) and formal workload, levels of worry regarding COVID-19 and the perceived likelihood of being infected with COVID-19 or developing severe symptoms. Controlling for chronic diseases, age and the level of effort directed into parenting, mediation analysis revealed that increases in household tasks were associated with higher levels of risk perception through a mediation of affect. Conditional on participant’s gender, relational tasks and formal workload were found to be related to risk perception, through a mediation of affect. Findings signal the relevance of informal and formal roles on predicting gendered reactions to risk perception and how changing social roles of men may have implications for the gender gap in risk perception.
Keywords: Affect; Gender; COVID-19; Informal and Formal Roles; Risk Perception.
Resumo Alargado
Vários estudos de avaliação e comunicação de risco têm vindo a relatar um efeito de género na perceção de risco, ou seja, a tendência geral que as mulheres têm para estimar o risco como mais elevado comparativamente a homens (e.g., Flynn et al., 1994; Morioka, 2014; Brug et al., 2004; van der Linden, 2015). No entanto, poucos avanços foram feitos na desconstrução e compreensão deste efeito, salientando a necessidade de combinar a literatura atual com investigação relevante na área do género (Henwood et al., 2008).
A fim de responder a estas questões, Davidson e Freudenburg (1996) sugerem que os papéis de género poderão exercer um impacto basilar nas perceções de risco, uma vez que direcionam as preocupações de mulheres e homens em direções distintas. Esta visão binária parte da noção de que através de processos de socialização (Lindsey, 2015) as raparigas e rapazes são expostos a um conjunto de códigos e narrativas que não só constroem crenças estereotípicas face ao género, como implicitamente modelam a identidade do próprio (Eagly
& Wood, 1999, 2012). Assim, por ocuparem papeis cuidadores e / ou domésticos as mulheres são atribuídas traços, valores e motivações de comunhão (i.e., atributos orientados para a manutenção de relações e funcionamento social). Por outro lado, por os homens tenderem a adotar tarefas mais instrumentais e orientadas para a tarefa, são percebidos como mais agênticos (i.e., atributos orientados para a concretização de objetivos e performance). À luz destes estereótipos e da construção de uma identidade de género congruente, mulheres e homens vão adotando e especializando-se cada vez mais em papeis estereotipicamente associados ao género (Diekman et al., 2017), entre quais as tarefas informais e formais.
Assumindo que os papéis sociais podem formatar o modo como uma pessoa percebe o risco, poderá existir uma relação direta entre a carga de trabalho informal e formal e as perceções de risco.
As atividades e atributos estereotipicamente associados às mulheres têm vindo a aproximar-se de tendências tipicamente masculinas (p.e., Twenge, 1997, 2001; Twenge et al., 2012). No entanto, a velocidade a que os contextos femininos mudam não é acompanhada em complementaridade pela mutação dos papéis masculinos (England et al., 2010). Assim, surge uma assimetria na adoção de papéis sociais, uma vez que tarefas informais tendem a ser maioritariamente adotados por mulheres e tarefas formais tanto por mulheres como por homens. Neste sentido, o género pode agir em interação com a carga de trabalho informal e formal, explicando as diferenças de perceção de risco em estudo.
Apesar de tradicionalmente se falar da perceção de risco enquanto um processo cognitivo, avanços nas teorias dualistas abriram caminho para considerar um segundo processo basilar na perceção de risco: o afeto (Pidgeon, 1998; Siegrist & Árvai, 2020). Ainda que tendam a ser medidos e utilizados enquanto dimensões do mesmo construto nos estudos de avaliação de risco (e.g. Brug et al., 2004), vários autores têm defendido que na realidade a perceção de risco cognitiva e afetiva representam construtos distintos (Ferrer et al., 2013, 2016; Portnoy et al., 2014; Sjobergl, 1998). Em particular, a heurística do afeto (Slovic et al., 2004, 2007) defende que o afeto pode servir enquanto pista informacional, orientando o julgamento cognitivo em função da valência de uma dada emoção. Assim sendo, as relações encontradas entre as tarefas informais e formais poderão ser mediadas pelo afeto.
A crise pandémica da COVID-19 proporciona uma nova oportunidade para estudar as considerações teóricas supramencionadas. As sucessivas quarentenas implementadas pelos governos a fim de reduzir cadeias de transmissão do vírus, “forçaram” homens a adotar uma quantidade de trabalho informal consideravelmente superior aos padrões pré-pandemia (Alon et al., 2020; Carli, 2020; Profeta, 2020). Este novo contexto facilita a avaliação do impacto que papéis informais e formais podem ter sobre o risco, ainda que as disparidades de trabalho informal e formal tenham aumentado (United Nations [UN], 2020).
Neste estudo analisámos o efeito indireto da carga de trabalho informal e formal na perceção de risco, através de uma mediação do afeto, com todas as associações do modelo moderadas pelo género. Controlámos também o efeito da idade e de ser portador de doenças crónicas, visto que ambos representam grupos vulneráveis à COVID-19 (Gerold, 2020;
Lanciano et al., 2020; Niño et al., 2021), e o efeito da carga de trabalho informal associada ao grau de dependência de filhos (Eagly et al., 2004).
A amostra consistiu em 607 participantes (N = 301, mulheres) com idades compreendidas entre os 21 e 79 anos. De forma a medir a carga de trabalho informal – tarefas domésticas e tarefas relacionais – foi utilizado a Family Role Performance (FRP; Chen et al., 2014). A carga de trabalho formal foi medida através de um item referente às alterações de carga profissional durante os últimos seis meses. O afeto foi medido através de três questões adaptadas de Yıldırım e Güler (2020) relativas à preocupação com a COVID-19. Por sua vez, a perceção de risco foi medida através da probabilidade percebida de vir a ser infetado pela COVID-19 e de desenvolver sintomas graves. Metodologicamente, optou-se por fazer uma primeira análise de mediação através do software AMOS (v., 26, Arbuckle, 2019), seguindo- se uma análise de moderação mediada pelo género através do PROCESS (versão 3) macro para o SPSS (Hayes, 2018).
No que diz respeito à relação indireta entre carga de trabalho informal e formal e perceção de risco, foi apenas encontrada uma mediação positiva do afeto na relação das tarefas domésticas com a perceção de risco. No entanto, a análise de mediação moderada demarcou, apenas para os homens, uma mediação positiva do afeto na relação das tarefas relacionais com a perceção de risco e uma mediação negativa do afeto na relação das tarefas formais com perceção de risco.
O padrão de resultados encontrado demonstra a relevância explicativa que os papéis informais e formais têm no efeito de género da perceção de risco. A perceção de risco dos
homens foi significativamente explicada por todos os modelos de mediação, ao invés das mulheres, cuja perceção de risco foi explicada unicamente pelo efeito indireto das tarefas domésticas. Visto que os papéis informais e formais poderão implicar modos de enquadrar o risco distintos, a relação unicamente significativa entre a carga de trabalho formal e perceção do risco para os homens, sugere que o modo como o género interage com papéis informais e formais pode implicar uma diferença qualitativa no modo como o risco é enquadrado e percebido entre homens e mulheres.
De acordo com a literatura relativa à heurística do afeto (Slovic et al., 2004, 2007), este processo emocional da perceção de risco pode servir como uma pista para informar a probabilidade de sofrer as consequências da exposição ao risco. Assim, a dissociação entre afeto e perceção de risco permitiu, também, clarificar a relação entre os construtos e o modo como se relacionam com os papéis de género.
Por último, os resultados aqui explorados parecem implicar que as mudanças nos papéis dos homens têm um papel redutor nas diferenças de género face à perceção de risco, sendo interessante compreender em futuros estudos se esta tendência surge apenas como resposta a um contexto de crise, ou se a adoção de papéis informais por parte dos homens pode efetivamente ter efeitos estáveis e duradouros.
Em suma, este estudo contribuiu não só por conectar literatura na área de perceção de risco com teoria de género a fim de examinar o efeito de género na perceção de risco, como também revela possíveis novas linhas de trabalho dentro do tema.
Table of contents
Introduction ... 1
Gender dynamics ... 2
Informal and formal roles and risk perception ... 4
Gender differences in informal and formal work and its relation to risk perception ... 5
Affect as a predictor of risk perception ... 7
Informal and formal roles within covid-19 crisis context ... 9
The present study ... 9
Method ... 11
Participants ... 11
Measures ... 12
Procedure ... 14
Data Analysis ... 14
Mediation analysis. ... 14
Moderated mediation analysis. ... 15
Results ... 16
Descriptive statistics and bivariate relations ... 16
Mediation Model ... 18
The moderating role of gender ... 20
Discussion ... 22
Strengths and Limitations ... 26
Practical implications and future research ... 27
References ... 30
Appendix A ... 42
Appendix B ... 43
Appendix C ... 44
Appendix D. ... 49
Appendix E. ... 50
Appendix F. ... 51
Introduction
Actual prevention and risk mitigation behavior depend on the individual risk representations that are built upon the conveyed messages and measures about that risk.
Indeed, human risk judgment is often biased, resulting in perceptions usually inconsistent with those of expert risk assessments (Slovic, 1987). Initial assessments of risk
representations have been, to the best of our knowledge, explored under either by examining the cognitive determinants of perceived risks (e.g., ‘the psychometric approach’, Slovic, 1987) or by identifying the social and cultural factors that bias some social groups to have higher or lower risk perception (e.g., Johnson & Swedlow, 2021).
A common finding among these studies is that, comparatively to men, women hold higher risk perceptions (Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996; Flynn et al., 1994). The empirical demonstration of this gender effect appears to be robust, as it runs throughout the literature on risk perception (e.g., risk-taking activities, Byrnes et al., 1999; technological and scientific disasters, Morioka, 2014; environmental hazards, Brug et al., 2004; van der Linden, 2015).
Nevertheless, some authors argue that theory-based explanations that go beyond descriptive data about gender differences is lacking (Gustafsod, 1998; Henwood et al., 2008, 2014;
Westner, 2012). Indeed, without relevant theorization, the findings are limited to the acknowledgment that stereotypical gender conceptions exist (Henwood et al., 2008, 2014).
Recent research in the COVID-19 context documents that men follow prevention measures to a lesser extent (Yıldırım et al., 2020) and rate risk lower than women (Dryhurst et al., 2020; Gerhold, 2020; Lanciano et al., 2020; Niño et al., 2021; Rana et al., 2021; Shen et al., 2021; Yıldırım & Güler, 2020; Yıldırım et al., 2020), supporting that gender is a relevant social category to explain different risk representations and compliance with preventive measures. Indeed, the gender effect on risk perception has already been found when measuring COVID-19 as a threat (e.g., Niño et al., 2021), as the perceived likelihood of infection and
perceived severity (e.g., Dryhurst et al., 2020), worry (e.g., Yıldırım & Güler, 2020), fear of COVID-19 (Ahorsu et al., 2020), anxiety (e.g., Fragkaki et al., 2021) or even simply as negative affects (e.g., Lanciano et al., 2020).
Some authors (e.g., Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996) propose that the differences between female and male risk perceptions result from the adoption of either caretaking or breadwinning roles, as women greater closeness to health and safety issues promotes higher risk concerns. The global pandemic declared by the World Health Organization because of the spread of a new coronavirus, has exacerbated existing disparities in informal and formal workloads between gender (United Nations [UN], 2020), with women taking on a disproportionate share of increasing household and caregiving responsibilities (Carli, 2020;
Czymara et al., 2021; Del Boca et al., 2020; Farré et al., 2020; Hank & Steinbach, 2021; Power, 2020; Profeta, 2020). Therefore, understanding risk judgments and behavioral responses is extremely relevant nowadays (Van Bavel et al., 2020) and that, despite unfortunate, this current situation presents us with interesting conditions to better understand the relation between gender, formal and informal workload, and risk perception.
Gender dynamics
Social role theory (Eagly, 1999; Eagly & Wood et al., 2012) posits that traditional gender roles (i.e., women as carers vs. men as breadwinners) result from distal historical factors and proximal regulatory mechanisms that link female and male identities to
stereotypical profiles. As individuals witness more women specializing in socio-emotional (or expressive) activities, an implicit association is made between behavior and traits (Croft et al., 2015) and as a result, communal characteristics (i.e., relationships and social
functioning orientation, Abele & Wojciszke, 2014; Eagly & Wood et al., 2012) are attributed primarily to women. Conversely, as men tend to perform more task-oriented (or instrumental)
roles, they are perceived as agentic, being associated with goal attainment and task functioning traits (Abele & Wojciszke, 2014; Eagly & Wood et al., 2012). Beliefs about gender roles, meaning the expected behaviors of women and men, appear as a result of learned associations between stereotypical attributes of gender and the division of labor, meaning the execution of different household and care related chores or / and distinct work roles (Eagly & Wood, 2012).
The shared belief that women are endowed with communal attributes and men with agentic ones, is linked to the performance of informal and formal roles through self- identification processes (Baron, et al., 2014; Witt & Wood, 2010). Primary socialization agents (e.g., family, peers, school) expose girls to a wide range of socioemotional activities and more intimate relational environments (see also Lindsey, 2015) that promote the development of socio-emotional skills such as empathy, communication, and social intelligence (e.g., Fenson et al., 1994; Matthews et al., 2009). Such exposure stimulates an overall preference for people-related topics and activities (Lippa, 2010) as well as the
development of communal social motives, i.e., the motives that energize and direct social life towards caring, cooperating, and connecting with others (Abele & Wojciszke, 2014). Men by opposition are associated with work (Devos et al., 2008) and prestigious status (Cejka &
Eagly, 1999), being their primary socialization agents more prone to expose them to
relational environments that value independence, assertiveness, and competition (Croft et al., 2015; Lindsey. 2015; Maddux & Brewer, 2005). As a result, men become more involved in activities that develop task-oriented skills, developing greater interest for object-related domains (Lippa, 2010) and performing socially in an agency-based manner (e.g., positively differentiate the self from others, Abele & Wojciszke, 2014).
As girls and boys become more involved in stereotypical attributions of femininity or masculinity, the implicit associations of women with communion and men with agency
congruently shape implicit associations about identity (Baron, et al., 2014; Witt & Wood, 2010). Also, because individuals tend to repeatedly commit to individual roles that afford communal or agentic preferences (Diekman et al., 2017), identities become a standard for behavior regulation (Croft, et al., 2015; Eagly & Wood, 2012).
Role involvement promotes the development of the corresponding attributes, values, and motives, which in turn influence future life decisions (Eagly & Wood, 2012). Therefore, as one becomes more inserted in a social category, memberships produce a shared social reality and, thus produce similar patterns of perceiving the social environment (Eagly et al., 2004). It seems appropriate to begin a gendered approach to risk research by examining how informal and formal roles are connected to risk. The question is how socialization processes may affect the adoption of gendered roles and, importantly, if and how they bias social and environmental perceptions, affecting risk representations. The underlying rational of this work is that gender may not affect risk estimations directly, but through an interaction between gender and social roles adoption (Eagly et al., 2004).
Informal and formal roles and risk perception
Davidson and Freudenburg (1996) propose that the differences between female and male risk perceptions result from the adoption of either caretaking or breadwinning roles.
Particularly, women’s higher risk perceptions are seen as resulting of their closeness to health and safety issues, while men’s lower risk perceptions are attributed to their economic
concerns (Blocker & Eckeberg, 1997; Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996; McCright, 2010).
This approach is, to the best of our knowledge, pioneer for presenting risk perceptions as conditional on social roles, failing, however, to theoretically develop the direct impact of informal and formal roles on risk perception (Henwood, 2008).
One possible explanation is that by continuously performing informal roles, that imply greater physical and emotional proximity from other family members, the well-being of these significant others becomes central for the individual (Eagly et al., 2004), and primes the development of an ethical, care-focused moral (Gilligan, 1982; Henwood, 2008, 2014). This implies that one’s greater informal workload may frame risk impacts in terms of social stability and others well-being, thus predicting higher risk perceptions.
On another hand, formal roles relation to risk concerns have produced mixed results (Blocker & Eckeberg, 1997; Davidson & Freudenburg, 1996; McCright, 2010). Most of this work has accounted the effect of formal roles has a correlate of economic concerns in detriment of care. However, because formal roles are usually more reliant on agentic
attributes than informal roles (Eagly & Steffen, 1984), being involved with the former may in fact lead individuals to face risk in a more functional and technical manner. Action-focused and technocentric narratives may make risk seem more controllable and manageable
(Henwood et al., 2014). Indeed, Flynn et al (1994) have described consistent lower risk assessments of men as a result of their associated higher social control. Following such rationale that formal roles may imply the adoption of a problem-resolution and action- focused framing of risk, it is reasonable to expect that formal roles lower risk assessments.
Gender differences in informal and formal work and its relation to risk perception The gendered division of labor creates a stratified social space where the utility and status of female traits, behaviors, and preferences related to care and household activities, is valued lower than the traditional male-related marketable activities, providing higher status to men (Block et al., 2018; Glick et al., 1995; Schmader et al., 2001). Naturally, lower status group members become motivated to hold higher status traits, but higher status group members undervalue any benefits or contributions from traits belonging to the lower status
group (Schmader et al., 2001). As a result, male stereotype suffer a disproportionated rigidification when compared to their counterpart (Diekman & Eagly, 2000; Diekman et al., 2004), reinforcing the internal and external barriers men face in internalizing communal characteristics and roles (for a review, see Croft et al., 2015).
Because the stereotypical attribution of fatherhood and masculinity within the family context includes agentic traits such as self-reliance, rationality, and assertiveness, the
associated attributes to masculine informal roles are congruent with the expected attributes of formal work (Hodges & Park, 2013). Conversely, to women are attributed traits and skills (e.g., affectionate, considerate, giving, Hodges & Park, 2013) that better afford traditional care and household tasks. The informal demands associated to men’s attributes (e.g.,
managing household paperwork) therefore are qualitatively different from the informal tasks associated with women (e.g., cooking), implying in itself distinct informal workload. Women continue to report a significantly higher number of hours spent on informal tasks, which reveals that they still assume the role of primary caregivers and householders (ILO, 2018;
OECD, 2017). For it seems that gender may moderate the association between informal workload and risk perception, given that the overall share of householding and caregiving tasks are taken by women.
Women’s roles have expanded to include paid activities outside the household context (England, 2010) as well as occupational specialization in male-dominated fields (e.g., STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; Croft et al., 2015). These new
behavioral patterns have resulted in a progressive association of agency traits to women (Diekman & Eagly, 2000; Twenge, 1997, 2001; Twenge et al., 2012). However, men's
participation in communal roles has not expanded in a way that matches the changing context of women's livelihoods, causing a gender asymmetry in informal and formal roles adoption (England, 2010). For instance, women adopt most of caretaking and householdings roles, but
formal work is assumed by both genders. The overlap of both informal and formal workload creates a direct conflict within roles (Rodgers & Park, 2013). Indeed, mothers and women in dual-earner couples report higher levels of family conflict with work demands (Shockley et al., 2017). Because men tend to engage mostly in formal work, whereas women engage in both, gender may moderate the extent to which formal workload predicts risk perceptions.
Affect as a predictor of risk perception
Risk perception is often described as a deliberative, logical, and rule-based judgment about the likelihood of being exposed to a particular risk (Brewer et al., 2007; Siegrist & Àrvai, 2020). According to dual process theories, these types of judgments are often attributed to System 2 processes (e.g., Epstein, 1994; Kahneman, 2011; Sloman, 1996), meaning that there is a thought-out deliberate processing of information that integrates conceptualizations of maximum likelihood and expected utility of decision making (Kahneman, 2011). Literature has emphasized the difference between this reason-based account of risk and a more affective processing of risk information (e.g., Slovic et al., 2004, 2007). Affective risk is often conceptualized as "the valence (positive vs. negative) and associated arousal (high vs. low) of affective responses'' to risk (Ferrer et al., 2016, p.653) and is frequently empirically described as dread, worry, fear or anxiety reactions (Loewenstein et al., 2001; Siegrist & Àrvai, 2020).
Thus, the affective processing of risk information is often considered as an integral System 1 mechanism (Slovic et al., 2004, 2007), implying frugal, intuitive, and automatic processing of information that facilitates judgment formation and decision making (Kahneman, 2011).
The conceptualization and empirical test of affective and cognitive risk perceptions as two dimensions of the same construct is not settled though (Portnoy et al., 2014; Siegrist &
Árvai, 2020). Some authors argue that these processes belong to distinct constructs that are moderately correlated (for a review see Portnoy et al., 2014), but result from different
predictors and hold different effects (Ferrer et al., 2013; Sjoberg, 1998; Portnoy et al., 2014).
Since little evidence measuring both affect and risk perception (e.g., Wilson et al., 2019) addresses the interplay between them, a direct contrasting analysis is much needed (Portnoy et al., 2014).
Emotional reactions to risky situations do not require mindful deliberation, diverging from rational risk evaluations, which may potentially lead to inconsistent behaviors (Loewenstein et al., 2001). The heuristical-judgments triggered by system 1 processes, use affect as a source of information to assess situational risks and benefits (Finucane, et al., 2000;
Slovic et al., 2004, 2007). This so called, affect heuristic leads individuals to act on and seek out risk information when facing affect cues such as worry (Loewenstein et al., 2001) but it may also, spill over to cause deliberative risk information (Slovic., 2004). Theoretically it seems clear that risk perception does not result exclusively from an analytic weighing of costs and benefits, but is plainly influenced by affect (Finucane et al., 2000; Slovic et al., 2004, 2007). Empirically, however, available evidence is mostly correlational, failing to examine the relation between affect and risk perception, meaning, how the affect heuristic may lead to biased risk judgments (Siegrist & Àrvai, 2020). To further test the aforementioned directionality, studies should focus on examining specific associations that elicit affect and in which the affect heuristic leads to biased risk judgments (Siegrist & Àrvai, 2020).
According to this rational the association between informal and formal workload to risk perceptions could be explained by the indirect role of affect. Because gender roles are though to frame risks in distinct ways, conditional to gender, informal and formal workloads may trigger inverse affective risk responses, which in turn lead to higher risk perceptions.
Informal and formal roles within covid-19 crisis context
The spatial and temporal boundaries between informal and formal work were blurred with the severe lockdown measures imposed to constrain the SARS-Cov-2 virus dissemination.
Families faced an increment of domestic tasks, particularly in households with children (Alon et al., 2020), that “forced” to men to take on significantly more informal responsibilities (Mangiavacchi et al., 2020; Carli, 2020), setting a new paradigm in male communal endeavors.
The increased male responsibility for household tasks presents us with the unprecedent possibility to understand if the increased care-related informal roles leads men, like women, to overestimate risk. We must note that, although men have expanded their commitment to family tasks, the gender imbalance in the adoption of overlapping roles remained stable. Mothers and women in dual-earner couples report both spending more hours on household tasks (e.g., cooking and cleaning; Del Boca et al., 2020) and relational tasks (e.g., providing emotional support; Hjálmsdóttir & Bjarnadóttir, 2021; Power, 2020), and they report more conflict between family and work domains (Shockley et al., 2017) than their gender counterparts.
The present study
We examine the gender effect of risk perception by exploring the associations between gender roles and risk perception.Moreover, aiming to provide insights on how informal and formal experiences are connected to affect and risk perception, we empirically test affective and cognitive mechanisms that bind gender social experiences to risk representations.
Risk representations were measured as the worry felt regarding COVID-19 - affect - and the perceived likelihood of becoming infected with COVID-19 or developing severe symptoms - risk perception. We hypothesized that while informal workload would be positively associated with affect and risk perception, formal workload would be negatively associated with both. It was also expected that both formal and informal workload would be
associated with risk perception through a mediation of affect. More broadly, given the gender asymmetry in informal and formal workload as well as in reported COVID-19 worry (e.g., Lanciano et al., 2020; Yıldırım & Güler, 2020) and COVID-19 risk perception (e.g., Dryhurst et al., 2020), we examined the moderating role of gender, exploring how these associations may be conditional on gender identity.
Indeed, since women and men are expected to have different household and care role performances, associations between increased informal workload and both affect and risk perception should be stronger for women. Following the same rational, since women and men perform informal and formal roles asymmetrically (e.g., England et al., 2010), with men being mainly associated to work (Devos et al., 2008), the path from workload to affect and risk perception may be stronger for men. Fig. 1 presents the hypothesized moderated mediation model.
Finally, we included several control variables in the model. The inclusion of age and chronic illnesses is associated with the literature that describes that senior and chronically ill individuals are more vulnerable to COVID-19, and therefore are expected to report higher affective responses and risk perceptions to COVID-19 (Gerold, 2020; Lanciano et al., 2020;
Niño et al., 2021). Because the number of children one cares for is indicative of higher informal workload (Eagly et al. 2004), particularly if they belong to younger age groups, it was also included a control variable that scores participants according to the number of children in their household and their respective ages.
Figure 1.
The hypothesized Model
Method Participants
Data was collected within a larger project featuring a resilience-based assessment of the responses presented by the Portuguese to the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 1,146). To ensure data representativeness, age, sex, residence area (NUTS II) and academic qualifications quotas were implemented for data collection. Nevertheless, since our target were working individuals, participants who reported being under twenty-one years old, unemployed, retired, or domestic were excluded (N = 488 participants). We further excluded 51 respondents due to missing data.
The final sample included 607 participants (N = 301, females), with ages between 21 and 79 years old (M = 41.45, SD = 11.94). The sample included participants that are married or sharing a house within a stable relationship (46%), parents (59.1%) with one or two children (87.7%) under 18 (40%). Most participants did not report having chronic diseases (82.4%) nor living with someone chronically ill (80.4%). Additionally, some had completed higher degrees (40.9%) or secondary school qualifications (54.4%) and reported having a household income above a thousand euros (69.8%).
Measures
Informal workload. Informal workload was measured with six questions adapted
from the Family Role Performance scale (FRP - Chen et al., 2014). Due to inquiring time constraints, we only used the items with the highest loadings, i.e., those that explained greater variance in the original scales (see Appendix A). This measure included two subscales: the task-oriented FRP (e.g., "Do household chores such as cooking and cleaning"), indicative of household tasks, in which all four original items were retained, and the relationship-oriented FRP, indicative of relational tasks, in which only the items "Provide support to your family members" and "Keep family members connected with each other" were kept. Participants were asked the extent to which they had performed each task during the past year on a 3- point scale, rating each item from 1 ("Much less than before the pandemic") to 3 ("Much more than after the pandemic"). A CFA supported the original structure and showed good model fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999; Kline, 2011): χ2 (5) = 8.86, p =.12; χ2/df = 1.77; CFI = 1;
RMSEA = 0.04; SRMR = 0.02. Internal consistency for the FRP dimensions was acceptable:
task-oriented (α = .71) and relationship-oriented dimensions (α = .63). For the latter
dimension, Cronbach’s alpha was below the benchmark of .70, which is usually considered acceptable reliability. Because Cronbach’s alpha tends to be sensible to scales with a small number of items (Swailes & McIntyre-Bahtty, 2002), thus leading to lower alpha coefficients, we followed Clark and Watsons’ (1995) recommendation and calculated for the relationship- oriented dimension the mean inter-item correlation - a correction factor provided by
Cronbach (1951) that is independent of the number of factor items. Since the inter-item mean correlation for the relationship-oriented FRP (.46) was within the recommended range of .15- .50, we accepted the alpha coefficient as appropriate (Clark & Watson, 1995).
Formal workload. Formal workload was measured with a single item about workload
alterations over the past year. Participants reported if within the past year their professional tasks had decreased, remained the same or increased.
Affect. Affective responses to risk were measured using three items adapted from
Yildirim & Güler (2020). Participants were asked to indicate how worried they were about contracting COVID-19 on a 11-Point scale, ranging from 0 (“Very Unconcerned”) to 10 (“Very Concerned”). The worrisome question was formulated at three levels: about personal worry, about close others and about public health (see Appendix B). Reliability analysis presented a good internal consistency (α = 0.79) (Kline, 2000).
Risk Perception. Risk perception was measured with two items about the perceived
likelihood of acquiring COVID-19 and of developing severe symptoms (see Appendix C).
Participants were asked to rate their perceived likelihood on a 11-Point scale, from 0 (“Very Unlikely”) to 10 (“Very Likely”). Internal reliability was good (α = 0.77, Kline, 2000).
Individual Characteristics. Demographic variables included gender, age, education
level, household income, employment status, marital status, number and age of children and chronic diseases. Participant’s number of children and their age was computed to create a composite score reflecting the degree of children dependency each participant supported.
Children dependency score1 was computed by attributing higher scores to younger children and lower to older. After, we summed the scores according to the number of children each participant had. To exemplify, parenting a child in the first age group scored 7 points, while
1 Childs dependency score = (Nº of children < 2 years * 7) + (Nº of children within 2- 5 years * 6) + (nº of children within 6-10 years * 5) + (nº of children within 11-15 years * 4) + (nº of children within 16-17 years * 3) + (nº of children within 17-30 years *2) + (nº of children >30 years * 1).
parenting a kid in the older cohort scored only 1. One participant with two newborn babies would score 14 (7 X 2), while a participant parenting two adults would score only 2 in the children dependency variable.
Procedure
Data was collected by a market research company between March and April 2020.
Data collection was made online but also with telephonic interviews so that all age groups would be represented, assuming that older individuals could be unable to answer
autonomously online. The interviews were conducted by professionals hired, trained and supervised by the market research company. Participants provided their informed consent, guaranteeing voluntary participation and confidentiality. The variables used were included in a broader survey, that included other questions about the impact of the pandemic in other domains as, for example, personal well-being, social cohesion or socio-political views. The overall study is in conformity with the ethical guidelines of the host institution.
Data Analysis
Initial analyses included descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations among the model variables (i.e., predictors, criterions, mediators, moderators, and covariates). Informal workload variables (i.e., household and relational tasks) as well as affect and risk perception, were composite variables, computed by averaging their respective items. Skewness and kurtosis were evaluated for all study variables (Chok, 2010). Skewness values ranged from - .798 to .064 and kurtosis values ranged from -.473 to .713 which are considered acceptable values (Hair et al., 2010).
Mediation analysis. The proposed mediation model was tested using path analysis (AMOS, v., 26, Arbuckle, 2019) with bootstrap estimation. A mediation was conducted to test indirect effects of informal and formal workload on participant’s risk perception, through
affect. Given that previous studies have shown significant differences in vulnerable groups (Gerold, 2020; Lanciano et al., 2020; Niño et al., 2021) for affective responses and risk perceptions regarding COVID-19, and that the amount of informal workload associated with parenthood may confound with significant findings (Eagly et al., 2004), age, chronic
illnesses, and children dependency score were included in this model as covariates. Based on theoretical assumptions and on significant correlational analysis results (i.e., p < .001), the two dimensions of informal workload (i.e., household and relational tasks) and age and chronic illnesses were allowed to correlate.
As recommended by MacKinnon, Lockwood, and Williams (2004), a bootstrap approach (Shrout & Bolger, 2002) was used to test the mediation hypothesis by performing a nonparametric resampling method (bias-corrected bootstrap) (Preacher & Hayes, 2004) with 10000 resamples drawn with replacement from the original sample to derive the 95%
confidence interval for the indirect effects. To assess the model fit, the following fit indexes and criteria were used: the relative χ2-index (χ2/df) values ≤ 2, the comparative fit index (CFI)
>.95, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and the standardized root mean residual (SRMR) <.08 as indications of good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999; Kline, 2011; Schreiber et al., 2006).
Moderated mediation analysis. To examine the moderating role of gender in the indirect associations between and among informal and formal workload and risk perception through affect, three moderated mediation models were tested, one for each predictor variable (i.e., household tasks, relational tasks and formal workload). Our goal was to analyze the indirect effects of informal and formal workload on reported risk perception via affect, conditional to gender. The moderated mediation model was estimated by PROCESS (version 3) macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2018), using model 59. Participant’s gender was specified in the model as a moderator of all pathways: 1) associations between informal and formal workload
and affect; 2) associations between affect and risk perception and; 3) associations between informal and formal workload and risk perception. Bootstrapping was used to test the
significance of the conditional direct and indirect effects calculating the confidence intervals and standard errors needed for parameter estimation (Hayes, 2018). Each analysis used 10,000 bootstrap re-samples, and significance was determined based on 95% bias-correct confidence intervals (i.e., the parameter was interpreted as significant if the CI did not contain zero) (Hayes & Preacher, 2010).
Results Descriptive statistics and bivariate relations
Descriptive statistics (M, SD) and bivariate correlations are presented in Table 1.
Informal workload increased during the pandemic for both household tasks (M= 2.33, SD
=.40) and relational tasks (M= 2.34, SD =.50), while formal workload remained unchanged (M = 1.91, SD =.63). Affect and risk perception results show that participant’s levels of worry (M=7.43, SD=2.03) tend to be higher, t (606) = 31.88, p<.001, Cohen’s d = 2.43, 95%
CI: 1.19, 1.40, than their estimates relative to infection and severe symptoms development (M=4.28, SD=2.14).
Significant positive correlations were found between household and relational tasks.
Household tasks were positively associated with affect but not with risk perception.
Relational tasks presented the inverse pattern with affect and risk perception, with all found relations presenting weak correlations. Formal workload was only negatively correlated with both household and relational tasks, although this correlation was very weak. Moderate positive correlations were found between affect and risk perception.
Table 1.
Descriptive statistics (M, SD) and bivariate correlations
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1. Gender (1 = Women) –
2. Age -.03 –
3. Chronic illnesses .08 .22*** –
4. Children dependency score -.05 .10* -.02 –
5. Household tasks .04 -.05 .01 .10* –
6. Relational tasks -.01 .10* .05 .10* .38*** –
7. Formal workload .00 .02 -.03 -.01 -.09* -.09* –
8. Affect .17*** .03 .08 .00 .11** .05 -.04 –
9. Risk perception .06 .04 .18*** .09* .01 .08* .02 .32*** -
M – – – – 2.33 2.34 1.91 7.43 4.28
SD – – – – .40 .50 .63 2.04 2.14
Note. M = Mean, SD = Standard deviation.
* p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01. *** p < 0.001
Regarding the covariates, age was found to be only positively related with relational tasks. Chronic illnesses did not hold any correlations except for risk perception. Children dependency score was found to be weakly and positively correlated with household tasks, relational tasks and risk perception. Finally, participant’s gender was only positively correlated with affect.
Mediation Model
A mediation path analysis was performed to examine the indirect associations between informal workload (i.e., household and relational tasks) and formal workload and risk perception, through participant’s affect. This model presented a acceptable fit to the data:
χ2 (12) = 36.61, p < .001; χ2/df = 2.82; CFI = .90; RMSEA = .06; SRMR = .04. Fig. 2 shows the unstandardized and standardized bootstrap parameter estimates of the path analysis model and the covariances among model variables. Table 2 presents the unstandardized estimates and corresponding confidence intervals for affect and risk perception, along with the standardized estimates.
Results revealed a significant indirect effect of household tasks on risk perception through affect, B = .18, SE = .09, 95 % CI: .03, .38, β =.03. Meaning that participants whose household tasks increased, reported higher affective responses to COVID-19, and
subsequently higher levels of risk perception. Both total and direct effects of household tasks on cognitive risk perception were non-significant. Thus, results revealed indirect-only
associations between household tasks and risk perception, through affect. No direct or indirect effect of relational tasks or formal workload on risk perception through a mediation of affect were found. Both chronic illnesses and children independency score predicted positively risk perception.
Figure 2.
Mediation Analysis Model
Note. Model of the indirect associations between participant’s informal and formal workload and risk perception, through affect. Arrows in solid represent significant indirect effects. For ease of interpretation, only significant effects are represented.
* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.
Table 2.
Model estimates of Affect and Risk Perception
Affect Risk Perception
Predictors
B (SE) 95 % CI β B (SE) 95 % CI β
Household Tasks
Direct Effect .55 (.26) .07, 1.08 .11 -.34 (.23) -.80, .13 -.06 Indirect Effect - - - .18 (.09) .03, .38 .03
Relational Tasks
Direct Effect .01 (.19) -.37, .39 .00 .34 (.18) -.01, .70 .08 Indirect Effect - - - .00 (.06) -.13, .13 .00
Formal Workload
Direct Effect -.10 (.12) -.34, .14 -.03 .14 (.12) -.10, .36 .04 Indirect Effect - - - -.03 (.04) -12, .04 -.01
Affect - - - .33 (.04) .25, .41 .33
Age .00 (.01) -.01, .02 .03 .00 (.01) -.02, .01 - .03 Chronic Illness .37 (.23) -.09, .79 .07 .90 (.24) .43, 1.35 .16 Children Dependency Score -.01 (.02) -.05, .03 -.01 .05 (.02) .02, .09 .10
Note. B = Unstandardized estimates; SE = Standard error; CI = Confidence interval; β = standardized estimates.
The moderating role of gender
Results of the moderated mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect effect of relational tasks on risk perception, through affect, only for men: B = .22, SE = .11; 95 % CI:
.03, .44 (see Appendix D). That is, for men, an increase in relational tasks was associated with higher affective responses to COVID-19, which in turn was associated with higher levels of risk perception. Results also showed a significant indirect effect of formal workload on risk perception, through affect, once more only for men: B = - .15, SE = .06; 95 % CI: -.27, -.04 (see Appendix E). That is, for men, increases in formal workload were associated with lower affective responses to COVID-19, which in turn was associated with lower risk perception.
Both these conditional indirect effects were accounted for by the moderating effect of gender
on the association between relational tasks and formal workload with affect (a path). For descriptive purposes, we plotted these associations (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4) separately for women and men. Simple slope tests indicated that only for men increases in relational tasks (B = .64;
SE= .26; 95% CI = .14; 1.15) and formal workload (B = -.43; SE= .18; 95% CI = -.79; -.07) were associated to affect. Direct effects of relational tasks and formal workload on risk perception were non-significant. Thus, results revealed indirect-only associations between relational tasks and formal workload and risk perception, through affect for men. The overall moderated mediation model was supported with the index of moderated mediation (Hayes, 2018), both for relational tasks (Index = -.36; SE= .13; 95% CI = -.61; -.13) and formal workload (Index = .22; SE= .08; 95 % CI = .06, .39) as predictors. No moderated mediation was found in the indirect association of household tasks with risk perception (see Appendix F).
Figure 3.
Affect as a function of relational tasks and gender
Figure 4.
Affect as a function of formal workload and gender
Discussion
Aiming to go beyond a generic description of gender effects on risk representations, we examined the indirect effect of informal and formal roles on risk perceptions through a mediation of affect, with all associations moderated by gender. To fulfill such goal COVID-19 pandemic crisis presented the perfect scenario. The successive forced quarantines motivated men to enroll more in household and familiar related tasks (Alon et al., 2020; Carli, 2020;
Profeta, 2020), easing the evaluation of the impact that informal and formal roles may have on risk, independently of the binary perspective that women are to be associated with care and men with livelihood responsibilities. The dissociation between affective and cognitive processes of risk perception also allowed us to disentangle the contribution that each construct may have relative to each other and their relationship with informal and formal roles.
Contrary to what was expected, results show that there is only a positive indirect effect of household tasks on risk perception, that runs through affect. Women and men suffering an increase in household tasks, hold higher affective responses, and in turn higher risk perceptions.
Notably, a positive indirect effect was found when analyzing men separately. As the male role in relational tasks increases, the more they report being worried and therefore overestimate risk perception. For it seems that household tasks increase affective responses to COVID-19 for both males and females, whereas an increase in relational tasks predicts only males affect.
Recent studies have highlighted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemics on exacerbating gender inequality in informal work (Profeta, 2020; UN, 2020), with women devoting more time to household and caring tasks compared to men (e.g., Czymara et al., 2021;
Del Boca et al., 2020; Farré et al., 2020; Hank & Steinbach, 2021; Power, 2020). However, even if men performed less family tasks in the past, they seem to have started to assume a new set of tasks both in society and the family environment (Carli, 2020; Profeta, 2020). The amount of households reporting equal sharing of childcare and housework increased since the outbreak of the pandemics (e.g., Carlson et al., 2020). This finding may even be stronger in households where men head caring and performing domestic tasks, which have increased due to the high proportion of women in critical (e.g., health care) or non-telecommuting occupations (Alon et al., 2020). The rise in informal workload has likely led to men becoming more concerned with the well-being of others. Thus, while adopting new roles typically associated with caring, commitment, and intimacy men may have incremented their risk perceptions, becoming more similar to women.
The unexpected insignificant effect of relational tasks on affect for women raises the question about the reasons that led some women to report the reduction or maintained of their informal workload (especially when the workload is known to have raise globally because of the pandemic) and how can it account for the unsignificant effect. As reported above, the
percentage of households with women in occupations considered essential to the pandemic situation (e.g., women make up 70% of health workers worldwide, UN, 2020) or that are not suitable for telecommuting (Alon et al., 2020) is higher than that of men. Thus, there may be an overlap between women in these occupations and the decline in informal workload. Note that the impact of the decline in material and emotional support to family and friends is different for women than for men (Hodges & Park, 2013). While men's lower endorsement of these roles is perceived to be congruent with social ascriptions of masculinity, for women this decline represents a loss of roles that are embedded in their identity, as they are attributed the qualities and values of caring and closeness (Eagly & Wood, 2012; Hodges & Park, 2013).
Therefore, women may feel a greater conflict due to their inability to balance career demands with family needs, especially in a context that shakes up the daily lives of people on all spectrums. In addition, household and relational tasks may differ from each other, as accomplishing household tasks may be perceived as more independent from the caretaker.
Since emotional support, communication skills, and maintaining cohesion require a range of socio-emotional characteristics and more intimate relational bonds, women whose job demands avoid them from performing these tasks, may perceive their personal lower levels of support as more detrimental than domestic deeds. The unsignificant trend may have occurred because women who are unable to meet the heightened emotional and relational needs of family members, become more concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on their family.
As expected, we found a negative moderated mediation of formal workload on risk perception, with the hypothesized indirect pathways being significant exclusively for men.
Specifically, the increase in men's formal workload was associated with a lower affective responses to COVID-19. Since men tend to be primarily associated to formal work-related roles (Devos et al., 2008), the increase on this particular type of tasks is less likely to conflict with family responsibilities. Unlike women, for whom a decrease in informal workload may
imply an identity conflict (Hodges & Park, 2013), for men the non-adoption of these roles in the expense of job demands corresponds to the social expectations. Moreover, the raise in domestic and caregiving demands during working hours may affect men's work less than women's, even if they telework (Collins et al., 2021). Thus, because the increase in formal workload could underlie an interaction with family responsibilities that differs markedly between men and women, the increase in formal workload could be associated with affect only for men.
The results regarding the role of affect as a mediator in the relationship of informal and formal workload with risk perception is quite linearly interpretable. On the one hand, household tasks directly predict affective risk, whereas relational tasks and formal workload predict affective responses to risk through a moderation of gender. On the other hand, higher levels of affect directly predict higher risk perception. In accordance with the affect heuristics literature (Slovic et al., 2004, 2007), affect may serve as a cue to inform one's likelihood of suffering the consequences of risk exposure. For instance, the specific social roles one assumes may give meaning to one's understanding of risk (Henwood et al., 2014), triggering higher or lower affective responses to COVID -19, which in turn allocate cognitive resources and behaviors consistent with the valence of one's worry (Loewenstein et al., 2001; Siegrist
& Árvai, 2020; Slovic et al., 2004, 2007).
Of most interest, men’s risk perception was found to be predicted by every mediation model, whereas women’s risk perception was predicted solemnly by the indirect effect of household tasks. Because informal and formal roles are thought to be directly related to risk as they underly different ways of perceiving risk (e.g., others well-being vs. technical accounts, Henwood et al., 2014), the unique formal workload prediction of men’s risk perceptions may indicate that genders differ in the ways in which risk is framed. Second, because men who increased their informal workload did indeed report higher affective
responses and risk perception to COVID-19, our study suggests that the changing roles of men may lower the gender gap in risk perception.
Taken together, these results support the general hypothesis that informal and formal roles are related to risk perception via the mediation of affect, and that significant differences occur as a function of gender dynamics.
Strengths and Limitations
This study adds to research in this area by empirically contributing to understand informal and formal roles as drivers of the gender risk effect. The separate analysis of affect and risk perception adds empirical data to considerations of these processes of risk as distinct constructs (Ferrer et al., 2013, 2016; Portnoy et al., 2014; Siegrist & Árvai, 2020). This research also allows to consider gender as an aggregate social category that shapes the meaning of gender role adoption and corresponding workload for women and men, thus influencing stated affective and cognitive processes of risk perception. It is important to note that the findings of this study emerged in a pandemic context in which activated mitigation mechanisms exacerbated inequality in women's informal work while enabling a historical shift in men's participation in traditional family roles. Certain outcomes may thus be attributable to the context of COVID -19, raising the need to test these effects in other types of risk.
Nevertheless, by including only employed individuals in our sample, valuable information may have been lost about individuals for whom increased family needs didn’t have to be reconciled with work demands. We also did not control if participants jobs were under telework or lay-off settings. Because these employment settings may limit the number of hours spent on informal and formal tasks (Del Boca et al., 2020), the reported results could be partly explained by these distributions. Regarding the measurement of informal workload, the choice of a 3-point scale for the Family Role Performance scale (Chen et al., 2014) may have limited
the interpretation of the results and the emergence of more accentuated differences between women and men role endorsement. As the national quarantine invariably involved higher demands on household management and physical and emotional care to family members (Alon et al., 2020), most participants invariably reported an increase in their domestic and care efforts.
This is reflected in the high mean scores on both informal workload dimensions and the absence of gender differences in these scale. The selection of a 3-point scale may have limited the discriminatory power of this measure and further limited the results found. Furthermore, because participants were solemnly asked about increases in their individual performance on the tasks without any comparative terms, their responses may have been overestimated. A more objective measure of participants' FRP could have prompted participants to estimate their increase in these tasks relative to their peers or to estimate the hours spent in family domains vs. work domains. Lastly, although the hypothesized moderated mediation model is theoretically based, the data does not allow for causal inferences to be made. Future work should use longitudinal studies in which the directionality of these effects can be explicitly tested.
Practical implications and future research
The results we observed in informal-formal roles differences for men have implications for the causes of the gender gap in risk perception. Because men who endorse in informal tasks converge with women’s risk perception, policies and interventions that might motive the changing roles of men may have a positive effect in lowering the gender gap in risk perception.
However, we must note that the current data was collected between March and April of 2021, still under national lockdown and after a big outbreak in Portugal with the highest infection and death rates since the beginning of the pandemics. Thus, the associations of informal workload to affect and risk perception might have been a short-term response to the rapid
changing context and the stressed environment (Greenberg & Schneider, 1995). Further studies should retest the associations paths in our study, to understand if the found effects are contingent upon stressed environments such as epidemics, or if the disruption of previous social stability by COVID-19 pandemic and it’s adaptations have built long-lasting effects.
Because the decreasing impact of formal workload upon risk perception was only significant to men, this study suggests that women and men possibly differ in the concerns that underly the found gender effect on affective responses to COVID-19 (e.g., Henwood et al., 2014), especially when male individuals are not engaged with informal roles. However, as we did not study this directly, further research should investigate the differences that may underly a gendered framing of risk. In particular, qualitative research should be implemented to understand women and men mental maps regarding COVID-19, and how individual characteristics such as informal and formal workload interact with risk framings. The development of this line of work may inform risk communication interventions, as by empirically uncovering meaningful differences in risk concerns amongst certain populations, interventions could be tailored made to respond to target populations needs and concerns.
Lastly, in this study we focused on understanding how social roles connect to gendered risk perceptions, in terms of the gender division of informal and formal workloads. However, the division of labor extends to the types of occupational roles women and men tend to adopt.
Following social role theory (Eagly & Wood, 1999, 2012), as women and men develop more in a communal and agentic (respectively) way, their traits, values and motives are afforded by different professional paths (Diekman et al., 2017). In particular HEED occupations (Healthcare, Early Education and Domestic; Croft et al., 2015) tend to be mainly occupied by women, as they encompass greater communal endeavors, whereas STEM careers tend to be occupied by men, as they are enacted mostly a agentic-based way. In similarity to informal- formal workload gender asymmetry, women have been increasingly entering STEM domains,
whereas HEED careers remain largely represented by women (Croft et al., 2015). Moreover, because STEM roles tend to be evolved with technical risk management tasks, the way individuals in these occupations frame risk may be highly biased by the technical orientations of their occupations. On another hand, ones adoption of HEED occupations may be related to an enhance in framings of risk that regard disruptions of social well-being. In this sense, it would be interesting to collect data from women and men from both HEED and STEM occupations and understand how gender and occupations interact to predict affective and cognitive processes of risk perception.
As it sums, this study not only contributes to bridge the gap between theoretical accounts of risk perception and gender, as it uncovers new possible lines of work within the gendered effect of risk perception.
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