These findings have held across a variety of events, but during the pandemic, U.S. polls show that Democrats, who tend to be more liberal, have generally been more concerned about the COVID-19 threat than Republicans, who tend to be more conservative. A new UCLA study explores this reversal, probing the relationship between innate dispositions toward threats, the social environment and responses to the pandemic. Led by UCLA graduate student Theodore Samore, anthropology professor Daniel Fessler and postdoctoral scholar Adam Sparks, along with cognitive scientist Colin Holbrook from UC Merced, the study found that Republicans’ and independents’ inclinations to embrace protective behaviors in proportion to their degree of conservatism were overruled by distrust in science and in liberal or moderate information sources. Republicans and independents also focused on the negative economic impacts of the lockdowns and the perceived infringement upon personal liberties. Together, these factors led socially conservative Republicans and independents to take fewer precautionary measures, such as mask-wearing, physical distancing and sanitizing.