Cooperation and Trust Across Societies During the COVID-19 Pandemic. (August 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Romano, Angelo; Spadaro, Giuliana; Balliet, Daniel; Joireman, Jeff; Van Lissa, Caspar; Jin, Shuxian; Agostini, Maximilian; Bélanger, Jocelyn J.; Gützkow, Ben; Kreienkamp, Jannis; Leander, N. Pontus
• Is Part Of: Journal of cross-cultural psychology. Volume 52:Number 7(2021)
• Page Start: 622
• Page End: 642
• Publication Date: 2021-08
• Subjects: cooperation -- trust -- COVID-19 -- institutions -- social dilemmas -- culture; Ethnopsychology -- Periodicals; 155.805
• DOI: 10.1177/0022022120988913
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-0221

Abstract

Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 ( N = 34, 526), and test pre-registered hypotheses about how cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust relate to prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations (e.g., mandatory quarantine). We further tested whether cross-societal variation in institutions and ecologies theorized to impact cooperation were associated with prosocial COVID-19 responses, including institutional quality, religiosity, and historical prevalence of pathogens. We found substantial variation across societies in prosocial COVID-19 responses, stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations. However, we found no consistent evidence to support the idea that cross-societal variation in cooperation and trust among strangers is associated with these outcomes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. These results were replicated with another independent cross-cultural COVID-19 dataset ( N = 112, 136), and in both snowball and representative samples. We discuss implications of our results, including challenging the assumption that managing the COVID-19 pandemic across societies is best modeled as a public goods dilemma.