Evaluating infant feeding practice guidelines for individuals with HIV: a pilot study using qualitative findings with healthcare workers and normalization process theory.

Three studies showed that higher socioeconomic development at national, provincial, and city levels predicts lower compliance with pandemic norms, driven by reduced disease avoidance and familial motives. Infectious diseases have consistently posed a substantial threat to human survival and reproduction throughout evolutionary history (Inhorn & Brown, ; Wolfe et al., ). Norms are shared rules and expectations that guide behaviour in a society or group, maintaining social order and shaping interactions (Cialdini et al., ). Epidemic prevention norms, typically conceptualized as prescriptive (or injunctive) norms, refer to societal standards regarding what individuals ought to do and function to help people cope with the threat of infectious diseases (Ellickson, ; Fabrega, ; Murray et al., ). Compliance with prevention norms is crucial for containing disease spread and mitigating economic and political disruptions, particularly in the absence of effective medical treatments or vaccines (Bish & Michie, ; Hatchett et al., ; Jin et al., ). Recent studies have found that people in developing countries are more compliant with epidemic prevention norms than those in developed countries (Aamir et al., ; Lin et al., ). These findings suggest a potential link between levels of socioeconomic development and individual compliance, yet few studies have systematically examined this relationship. An evolutionary perspective offers a rich explanation for the association between environment and human behaviours, considering behaviours as adaptations to the environment (Ellis et al., ; Griskevicius et al., ). Disparities in environmental characteristics have led to the adoption of distinct adaptive psychological strategies (Brandstätter et al., ; Eom et al., ; Pedersen et al., ). The fundamental social motives summarize a series of psychological strategies that have evolved in response to recurrent challenges and opportunities, initiating and organizing behaviours in social life (Kenrick et al., ; Neel et al., ). Empirical evidence has shown these motives are closely linked to compliance during pandemics (Liu et al., ; Pick et al., ). The present study aims to systematically examine the relationship between socioeconomic development of environments and individual compliance with epidemic prevention norms while exploring the underlying psychological mechanisms through the lens of fundamental social motives.