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Mixed-Effects Models of Cross-Societal Differences in Cooperation and Trust Predicting Individual-Level Prosocial
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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 cooper...
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Context 1
... analysis of the intraclass correlation of the mixed-effects regression showed that there existed a substantial amount of between-society variation in prosocial motivations (ICC = 0.125) and behaviors (prosocial behaviors: ICC = 0.081; staying at home behavior: ICC = 0.142). In the mixed-effects regression (Table 2), counter to H1a,b, we found that cooperation (p = .725) and trust (p = .056) ...Context 2
... sum, results failed to support H1a and H1b. Men, compared to women, reported lower prosocial COVID-19 motivations, behaviors, and less staying at home behavior (see Table 2). There was no consistent association of age with prosocial COVID-19 responses (see Table 2, and for more details on age effects see Jin et al. in press). ...Similar publications
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted people routine in several ways, including the temporary cessation of face-to-face teaching activities, which may affect the mental health of the population. This study aimed to assess the mental health of the academic community of a University in South Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Methods: Cro...
Citations
... Research dealing with the alignment of individual versus collective interests (i.e. research on the social dilemma nature of the pandemic situation; e.g. [17,26,27]) was necessary to understand the conditions under which people would accept non-pharmaceutical measures (such as lockdowns), would trust their institutions and would show pro-social, cooperative behaviour toward others in times of crisis. ...
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many journals swiftly changed their editorial policies and peer-review processes to accelerate the provision of knowledge about COVID-related issues to a wide audience. These changes may have favoured speed at the cost of accuracy and methodological rigour. In this study, we compare 100 COVID-related articles published in four major psychological journals between 2020 and 2022 with 100 non-COVID articles from the same journal issues and 100 pre-COVID articles published between 2017 and 2019. Articles were coded with regard to design features, sampling and recruitment features, and openness and transparency practices. Even though COVID research was, by and large, more ‘observational’ in nature and less experimentally controlled than non- or pre-COVID research, we found that COVID-related studies were more likely to use ‘stronger’ (i.e. more longitudinal and fewer cross-sectional) designs, larger samples, justify their sample sizes based on a priori power analysis, pre-register their hypotheses and analysis plans and make their data, materials and code openly available. Thus, COVID-related psychological research does not appear to be less rigorous in these regards than non-COVID research.
... During times of crisis, individuals often encounter scarcity and uncertainty, prompting diverse responses ranging from altruistic acts of solidarity to self-serving behaviors, or even xenophobia (Bartoš et al., 2021). On the one hand, studies conducted during the pandemic show a great level of cooperation and solidarity among stakeholders at all levels (Brown & Susskind, 2020;Billiet et al., 2021;Romano et al., 2021). On the other hand, several other studies highlight instances of panic buying, hoarding of essential goods, and price gouging, driven by individuals' self-serving motivations (Bavel et al., 2020). ...
... mpted by unprecedented market dynamics, including stringent lockdown measures and restrictions induced by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. These events led to a re-evaluation of perspectives on strategy and its implementation, emphasizing the need for collaboration between a variety of internal and external constituents within the organizational framework [Romano et. al., 2021, Coetzee, 2021. The study sought to determine whether employee perceptions of system strategies had evolved in response to the evolving landscape characterized by increased complexity and interdependence. ...
The aim of this study is to determine the recognition and awareness of systemic strategies within the realm of practical business operations at three different levels of the organizational hierarchy. Two research hypotheses have been formulated. H1: The implemented strategy will be described as systemic. H2: Employees will assert the implementation of strategies through a systemic approach. The hypotheses were tested using a questionnaire survey administered to a convenience sample of postgraduate/post-diploma working students associated with sales functions. The survey included 1,400 respondents, divided into a pre-pandemic sample of 1,050 individuals and a post-pandemic sample of 350 individuals. A combination of traditional paper questionnaires and computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) was used to collect responses. The analysis of the survey responses reveals that the respondents from both the 2019 and 2022 cohorts do not affirm the existence of systemic strategies within their respective organizations. Furthermore, they do not claim that these strategies are implemented from a systemic perspective.
... The term of impersonal co-operation is taken from behaviourism (see, e.g., Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003), but it has also been applied to the creation of "valuable public goods, such as infrastructure, public services, and democracy" (Chen, 1996, p.192). One recent example is how co-operation between hitherto very distant groups has supported the COVID-19 pandemic response (Romano et al., 2020). The effects can also be seen in engagements to conserve natural resources, to mitigate the consequences of climate change, to suppress the spread of deadly diseases, to halt military aggression, and other public goods, all of them within the sphere of the SDGs. ...
... 59 A study of 41 communities with low levels of government trust during the COVID-19 pandemic found no link between stringent rules and greater cooperation with hand-washing or physical distancing. 60 Especially in such settings, governments must rely less on coercion and more on building policies that can help people overcome the difficulties they encounter in cooperating with public health guidance. For example, states in the United States that employed social protection policies, such as paid family and sick leave, appeared to have increased compliance with emergency response measures among people who otherwise could not afford to comply. ...
Despite widespread acknowledgement that trust is important in a pandemic, few concrete proposals exist on how to incorporate trust into preparing for the next health crisis. One reason is that building trust is rightly perceived as slow and challenging. Although trust in public institutions and one another is essential in preparing for a pandemic, countries should plan for the possibility that efforts to instil or restore trust may fail. Incorporating trust into pandemic preparedness means acknowledging that polarization, partisanship and misinformation may persist and engaging with communities as they currently are, not as we would wish them to be. This paper presents a practical policy agenda for incorporating mistrust as a risk factor in pandemic preparedness and response planning. We propose two sets of evidence-based strategies: (i) strategies for ensuring the trust that already exists in a community is sustained during a crisis, such as mitigating pandemic fatigue by health interventions and honest and transparent sense-making communication; and (ii) strategies for promoting cooperation in communities where people mistrust their governments and neighbours, sometimes for legitimate, historical reasons. Where there is mistrust, pandemic preparedness and responses must rely less on coercion and more on tailoring local policies and building partnerships with community institutions and leaders to help people overcome difficulties they encounter in cooperating with public health guidance. The regular monitoring of interpersonal and government trust at national and local levels is a way of enabling this context-specific pandemic preparedness and response planning.
... Depending on the country, different regulations were implemented to lower exposure to the virus, such as working from home, maskwearing, social distancing and quarantining when infected (WHO, 2020). People differed in their compliance with these measures, and their adherence was shown to be under the influence of culture, morality, pro-social tendencies and political orientation (Romano et al., 2021;Xu and Cheng, 2021). The restrictions often changed over time, introducing variability in adherence depending on, for instance, type of job and living situation. ...
We asked 463 participants from 21 countries whether they had feigned and/or concealed having a coronavirus infection during the pandemic period. 384 respondents (83%) reported having experienced a coronavirus infection. They were, on average, younger and reported more chronic health issues than participants who said they had never been infected. 65 (14%) admitted to having feigned the infection. Prevalence doubled (28%) when asked if they knew anyone who had feigned a coronavirus infection. Main motives for feigning were to stay at home and to obtain sick leave. As to having concealed a coronavirus infection, 56 (12%) responded affirmatively, but when asked about others, the prevalence reached 51% ( n = 210). The most common reasons for concealment were to avoid letting others know and to not miss an event. Thus, both feigning and concealing infections can occur on a nontrivial scale, directly affecting prevalence rates in studies that rely on self-reported data collected from social platforms.
... With a cross-sectional dataset of 84 countries, Elgar et al. (2020) showed social trust and a sense of group belonging were positively associated with more deaths. Based on a survey in 41 societies, Romano et al. (2021) failed to find evidence supporting that cross-societal variation in cooperation and trust among strangers is associated with prosocial COVID-19 responses, stringency of policies, and behavioral regulations support in 2020. ...
This study examined how Chinese ingroup and outgroup trust have changed by the recent situational crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the China-US trade war since 2019. Based on a nationwide individual-level longitudinal dataset, we found ingroup trust has significantly increased within persons, while outgroup trust in Americans ceased its upward pattern and obviously decreased in 2020. The trends imply negative correlations between ingroup and outgroup trust as the Antagonism Theory stated. To better comprehend the connections, we utilized temporal and regional variations of pandemic exposure and adopted difference-in-differences approach to evaluate whether and how the domestic health crisis explained the trends. By analyzing alterations in trust levels within individuals before and after the COVID-19 outbreak, we obtained strong proof that the domestic health crisis played a causal role in decreasing Chinese trust in Americans. However, there is no significant evidence to support the causal link between increasing trends of ingroup trust and pandemic severity or regulation stringency. The results imply that domestic existential threats do not necessarily causally promote ingroup trust, but instead degrade outgroup trust, which potentially fuels intergroup competition and rivalry. Furthermore, the ingroup/outgroup divide in the digital realm augmented interpersonal rivalry in reality. Empirical evidence corroborates this conclusion, as positive moderating effects of internet usage were found, and stronger impacts were detected in export-focused regions. This discovery highlights the significance of building trust and cultivating intergroup empathy in the increasingly complex international situation.
... Experiments show this is more likely to occur during extreme dilemmas (Paredes et al., 2020), and the COVID-19 pandemic clearly qualifies as such a situation. Instances of reciprocal aid across communities (Ntontis & Rochas, 2020) and people eschewing their own freedoms for the greater good (Romano et al., 2021), during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate how shared crises can heighten solidarity (Federico et al., 2021)-at least in the beginning stages (Jetten et al., 2021). ...
We investigated mean-level changes in social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) during (vs before) New Zealand's nationwide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown at a time when New Zealand was led by a left-leaning government. The number of participants in the study ranged from (Ns = 24,065-24,653). Using propensity score matching to approximate experimental conditions , results show that both ideological motivations decreased slightly during the lockdown but rebounded after restrictions were removed several months later. We also tested whether the lockdown differentially moderated the associations SDO and RWA had with institutional attitudes. Lockdown conditions exacerbated the negative association between SDO and government satistfaction but attenuated the negative association between RWA and government satisfaction. Similar patterns emerged for trust in police and politicians but not trust in science. Although SDO and RWA fluctuated in similar directions during New Zealand's nationwide lockdown, our results indicate that people high in RWA may become more supportive of the government and police under such conditions-even in countries with a left-leaning political leader helming the pandemic response.
... Social dysfunction also results from the fear of corona virus. Social dysfunction makes an individual or a certain group of individuals unable to undertake its social function according to its social status (Romano et al., 2021). ...
... Similarly, the PsyCorona dataset consists of data collected at the start of the pandemic (n = 34,526) from 41 societies worldwide, measuring psychological variables and behaviours such as leaving the home and physical distancing 2 . That dataset has been used in follow-up studies to measure, for example, cooperation and trust across societies 3 and associations between emotion and risk perception of COVID-19 4 . Others have studied the concept of 'pandemic fatigue' (i.e., the perceived inability to "keep up" with restrictions), for which there are data available from eight countries 5 . ...
Besides far-reaching public health consequences, the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant psychological impact on people around the world. To gain further insight into this matter, we introduce the Real World Worry Waves Dataset (RW3D). The dataset combines rich open-ended free-text responses with survey data on emotions, significant life events, and psychological stressors in a repeated-measures design in the UK over three years (2020: n = 2441, 2021: n = 1716 and 2022: n = 1152). This paper provides background information on the data collection procedure, the recorded variables, participants’ demographics, and higher-order psychological and text-derived variables that emerged from the data. The RW3D is a unique primary data resource that could inspire new research questions on the psychological impact of the pandemic, especially those that connect modalities (here: text data, psychological survey variables and demographics) over time.
