4.5. H4: The Effect of the Severity of the COVID-19 Infection on Perceived Severity Is Moderated by the Infection Target
infection
INFECTION
H4 predicted that the narrative message describing a severe infection would lead to a greater perceived severity, especially when the infection target was the protagonist of the story. Therefore, we expected to find an interaction effect between the severity of the infection described in the message and the infection target on the perception of the severity of the infection narrated in the story. The PROCESS macro (Model 1) was used to test this hypothesis of moderation, which yielded a statistically significant interaction effect (B = 0.90, SE = 0.28, 