Misperceptions of Public Opinion During Crises: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic

How we perceive the public opinion climate can have important consequences on our own opinions and behaviors. Such perceptions are especially relevant during moments of widespread crisis, as they may influence support and compliance with crisis response measures. In this paper, we address what factors inform misperceptions of public opinion during these important moments. We focus on two complementary processes, internal and external crisis information processing, to explain variation in public opinion misperceptions of three measures during the COVID-19 pandemic (masking, use of a contact tracing app, and vaccination). Analyses of 82 weekly waves of longitudinal rolling cross-sectional surveys of the Swiss population during two years of the pandemic (N = 36,667) demonstrate that individuals regularly underestimated the popularity of these measures. We find that those who were in the opinion minority (usually those strongly opposed to these measures) had less accurate estimations of public opinion. News media played an important role for misperceptions. When it comes to the correction of misperceptions, individuals reporting to be regular news readers were more likely to have more accurate perceptions of public opinion. Combining the survey data with measures of media salience across news media published during this period, ARIMA time series modeling shows that the salience of measures in the media affects public opinion misperceptions for app usage and masking. Implications for the field of political communication are discussed both in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for crises more generally.