Measuring the unique effect of pro-military messaging on American public health behavior during COVID-19

American adults were uniquely bad at adhering to COVID-19 guidelines when compared to adults in other highly developed countries. Research pointed to Americans' distinctive partisan polarization as a key source of that failure, arguing that political partisanship transformed any united willingness to look out for all Americans into a willingness to only look out for my Americans. Yet, one apolitical frame commonly used throughout the United States' public health history was never widely applied nor empirically tested: that of taking public health actions to ‘support the troops.’ This article fills this gap via experimental data from more than 600 U.S. adults and observational data from 1000 U.S. counties measuring how messages that trigger support for the military may have affected adults' COVID-19 prevention behaviors. Results show that while messages about the importance of taking public health actions in order to protect the military may have had some effect on Americans' COVID-19 practices early in the pandemic, over time that effect eroded—while the divisive effects of political partisanship strengthened. Yet, limited evidence also indicates that military messages in Republican communities weakened some of partisanship's hold on public health behaviors—suggesting that a unifying military norm may still exist.