Figure - uploaded by Giuliana Spadaro
Content may be subject to copyright.
Mixed-Effects Models of Cross-Societal Differences in Cooperation and Trust Predicting Individual-Level Prosocial
Source publication
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...
Contexts in source publication
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
... 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.
... In the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, when social and political trust are ever more crucial to emplace coordina ted responses (Lalot et al., 2022;Romano et al., 2021), we therefore expect direct and indirect effects of legal status on social and political trust among refugees and migrants. More precisely, we hypothesized a main effect, so that secured legal status is directly associated with increased social and political trust (H1). ...
Building up on pre-existing vulnerabilities and social exclusions, refugees and migrants are disproportionately suffering from the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. Insecure legal status is an additional stressor that may accentuate social cleavages and ultimately impair their trust in host society and institutions. Based on a diverse sample of refugees and migrants in Belgium (N = 355), the present study investigates direct and indirect effects of legal status—measured as the type of residence permit held by participants—on social and political trust during the COVID- 19 outbreak. Secured legal status was positively associated with social and political trust directly, and indirectly via a serial mediation composed by two cumulative stages. First, participants with a more secured legal status experienced less material difficulties to cope with the pandemic (i.e., first material stage). Second, participant who experienced less material difficulties identified more with the host society (i.e., second symbolic stage). In turn, reduced material difficulties and increased identification with the host society were both positively associated with social and political trust. Our findings advocate for securing legal status of refugees and migrants to help societies cope cohesively with the long-lasting effects of the COVID- 19 outbreak.
... The pandemic of COVID-19 has brought unexpected challenges to populations and governments in the quest to preserve the status quo and have the least impact on people's well-being. To support these challenges, many studies in the social sciences sought to understand human behaviour in the face of this outbreak, such as in understanding the adoption of preventive measures [1,2], cooperation and trust in society [3] and positive thinking [4]. ...
This article assesses the relationship between consumer vulnerability (CV) and well-being (WB) by comparing the effects of ordinary (non-pandemic) and pandemic consumption contexts among Portuguese and Brazilian consumers. Data on pre-and post-pandemic perceived vulnerability and well-being from a cross-cultural sample of 397 consumers were analyzed through structural equations modelling using the PLS-Path. The results revealed an inverse relationship between CV and well-being, which worsened with the emergence of the pandemic. Refund Policies, Product Promotions and Purchase Ability are the dimensions of CV identified as the most affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Furthermore, fear proved to mediate the effect of vulnerability on well-being partially. The findings allow us to conclude that the most disrupted CV dimensions during COVID-19 are Refund Policy (RP), Purchase Ability (PA), and Product Promotion (PP). Studies comparing consumer vulnerability in international contexts are scarce. By finding the most critical dimensions of CV during a pandemic crisis, this study provides novel insights for companies and public institutions when planning responses and strategies to future disruptive occurrences. The conclusions represent an original contribution by analysing and comparing consumers' vulnerability in an everyday consumption situation and an extreme situation deployed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Valuable insights for governments and policymakers are provided. Firms working in international markets can use the insights to adapt their business strategy as effects on well-being vary across cultures.
... A scientometric study by Liu et al. (2022) showed that the most common keywords in social science research on COVID-19 are related to the field of psychology and mental health. The research conducted in the field of psychology during the pandemic can be divided into clinical aspects (Freedland et al., 2020), psychological consequences of restrictions such as quarantine and reduction of social relations (Pillay & Barnes, 2020), and the variety of consequences according to regional., cultural, groups, and individual differences (Romano et al., 2021;Freedland et al., 2020). So, the publications' content covers a wide range of topics (Colavizza et al., 2021), which requires a comprehensive and in-depth approach with emphasis on different disciplines in the research on COVID-19 (Aristovnik et al., 2020). ...
... The results of the research showed that the desire for international collaborations was low, while the results of past research show that it is increasing among psychology professionals (Henriksen, 2016). It seems that the special conditions of the pandemic, the need for rapid publication of research and the difference in the psychological consequences of Covid-19 in different societies (Romano et al., 2021;Freedland et al., 2020) have reduced cooperation between countries. ...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, modern science demonstrated its ability to respond well to the health crisis by publishing useful and reliable information. This disease has also led to an increase in psychological publications in this field. However, most scientometric studies have focused on medical aspects, and social science research has been neglected. Therefore, to fill this research gap, we analyzed the research on COVID-19 in the field of psychology to provide an insight into the perspective, research fields, and international collaborations. Data were collected from the Web of Science database and analyzed using Citespace and Bibliometrix (Biblioshiny). The overall performance of the documents was described, and then keyword co-occurrence and co-authorship networks were visualized. Fifteen main clusters were formed by drawing document co-citation network. The result indicates that Anxiety, mental health, delirium, loneliness, and suicide were important topics for researchers. Considering the special conditions that COVID-19 created for human societies, perhaps one of the most important subjects in the field of health is psychological studies. Using the results of this study, psychology researchers can identify their potential colleagues and research gaps in the subject of Covid-19. Mathematics Subject Classification 00A06 Mathematics for nonmathematicians (engineering social sciences etc.) · 00A99 None of the above but in this section · 91C05 Measurement theory in the social and behavioral sciences · 94C15 Applications of graph theory to circuits and networks
... Полученные на межстрановой выборке результаты анализа связи обобщенного, институционального доверия, норм кооперации с изменением интенсивности перемещений в целом подтверждают результаты других исследований по теме, опирающихся на альтернативные источники данных, а также уточняют выводы о характере связей в зависимости от качества институтов [Romano et al., 2021]. ...
Эффективность сдерживания пандемии может зависеть не только от действий правительств, но и от готовности населения следовать вводимым правилам, во многом обусловленной структурой социального капитала в обществе. В данной статье анализируются связи между раз- личными компонентами социального капитала и изменением интенсивности перемещений индивидов в период пандемии COVID-19. Статья опирается на данные World Values Survey, отчеты о передвижении людей Google, данные о строгости противопандемических мер правительств — Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker и др. Эмпирическая проверка гипотез проводится для выборки из 61 страны, а также для подвыборок стран с высоким и низким качеством институтов. Результаты показывают, что высокие уровни доверия правительству, полиции и судам, а также развитые нормы кооперации в обществе (в частности, неприятие безбилетничества) при прочих равных условиях способствуют снижению интенсивности перемещений в период пандемии. Этот эффект в особенности выражен в странах с высоким качеством институтов. Высокий уровень обобщенного доверия, напротив, не связан с сокращением интенсивности перемещений в период пандемии, что может ограничивать возможности по ее сдерживанию, в особенности в странах со слабыми институтами. Полученные результаты могут использоваться при выстраивании социально-экономической политики, направленной на сдерживание пандемии.
... Second, research is generally focused on relationship between various components of social capital (in particular, generalized trust) and effectiveness of containment measures (Borgonovi and Andrieu 2020;Doganoglu andOzdenoren 2020, Mazive et al. 2021). Third, currently, there are few studies on the analysis of flexibility of the identified relationship for different groups of countries (Romano et al. 2021). Due to specifics of transfer mechanisms, one can expect differences in the nature of relationship between various components of social capital (for example, generalized and institutional trust) and effectiveness of the pandemic containment in countries with different quality of institutions. ...
... The cross-country sample results of the analysis of relationship between generalized, institutional trust, norms of cooperation and changes in mobility generally confirm results of other studies on this topic based on alternative data sources, as well specify conclusions about the nature of relationships depending on the quality of institutions (Romano et al. 2021). ...
Effectiveness of the pandemic containment can depend upon both actions of governments and willingness of the population to follow the introduced rules, which is heavily dependable upon the social capital structure in society. This article analyzes relationship between various components of social capital and changes in mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article is based on data from the World Values Survey, Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, etc. The study hypotheses have been empirically tested on a sample of 61 countries, as well as subsamples of countries with high- and low-quality institutions. The results show that high levels of trust in the government, police and courts, as well as developed norms of cooperation in society (in particular, dislike of free riding), other things being equal, contribute to lower mobility during the pandemic. This effect is particularly pronounced in countries with high-quality institutions. A high level of generalized trust, on the contrary, is not associated with a lower mobility during the pandemic, which may limit its containment, especially in countries with low-quality institutions. The results obtained can be used for developing socio-economic policy aimed at containing the pandemic.
... A social dilemma is a situation in which individuals need to forgo personal short-term benefits and bear personal costs for a long-term and collective goal (Van Lange et al., 2013). Many of the COVID-19 mitigation behaviors, such as social distancing or the support of restrictive policies, represent a trade-off between self and other interests and thus a prosocial behavior choice (Jin et al., 2021;Romano et al., 2021). ...
... A social dilemma is a situation in which individuals need to forgo personal short-term benefits and bear personal costs for a long-term and collective goal (Van Lange et al., 2013). Many of the COVID-19 mitigation behaviors, such as social distancing or the support of restrictive policies, represent a trade-off between self and other interests and thus a prosocial behavior choice (Jin et al., 2021;Romano et al., 2021). ...
... Evidence suggested that young people suffered more from the social and economic consequences grounded in the COVID-19 containment measures, e.g., from loneliness and job insecurity, than from physical health risks related to a potential infection with the virus (Eurofound, 2020). Jin et al. (2021) provided empirical evidence from 56 societies and found that age was positively associated with higher perceived costs of contracting the virus and negatively with perceived costs in daily life, loneliness, and job insecurity. Young people were thus faced with higher perceived costs and fewer perceived benefits of containing behaviors (Jin et al., 2021). ...
Older adults were among the high-risk groups for COVID-19 infection and relied on less vulnerable groups to protect them. In Spring 2021, we examined potential intergenerational motivators of COVID-19 containing behaviors and the support of COVID-19 containment measures among young Germans (N = 258). Intergenerational contact and general identification with older adults were not associated with COVID-19 containing behaviors or support of COVID-19 containment measures. However, the awareness of older adults’ vulnerability to COVID-19 and the identification with older adults based on the shared experience of the pandemic were positive predictors of both criteria.
... In order to deal with COVID-19, many people are required to work with strangers. These acts come at a cost to the individual (e.g., social isolation), but are beneficial to the group as a whole (e.g., safeguarding vulnerable groups; i.e., a societal conundrum) [18]. A recent study revealed that educating individuals about the dangers the pandemic poses to their health significantly increased their trust in strangers [19]. ...
... In the present study, several indices of public trust relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic were included: trust in local government officials, doctors, and strangers [12,18,19]. Local government officials and doctors are cooperating to initiate response and communicate the corresponding reasons to the public [12]. ...
... Local government officials and doctors are cooperating to initiate response and communicate the corresponding reasons to the public [12]. Trust and cooperation among strangers may be the key to understanding how societies are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic [18]. These indicators cannot cover all aspects of public trust, but are representative, and the content and orientations involved are the focal issues deeply felt by the general public in a sudden pandemic [6]. ...
The sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on all aspects of people’s lives, including their attitudes toward society and psychological well-being. This study aimed to analyze the variation in public trust, perceived societal fairness, and well-being before and after the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This study used two-wave longitudinal data of 15,487 residents (2018, T1; 2020, T2) derived from the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS). A repeated measures analysis of variance showed that (a) public trust, perceived societal fairness, and subjective well-being significantly improved and (b) depression significantly increased. Linear regression analysis showed that education and socioeconomic status had a significant predictive effect on public trust, perceived societal fairness, and depression; socioeconomic status had a significant predictive effect on subjective well-being. This study provides evidence and direction for current social governance, namely, policy implementation and pandemic response.
... Hence, the social dilemma literature has been extensively referenced to provide advice for policy makers (Johnson et al., 2020;Korn et al., 2020). At the same time, there are doubts whether the social dilemma concept provides a useful model to guide policy-making in the pandemic (e.g., Romano et al., 2021). ...
... While individuals' benefits of cooperation versus defection are typically fixed, like the prisoner's dilemma game (Dawes, 1980), they are more difficult to allocate in applied social dilemmas like those arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. This may be one reason why it is not always straightforward to translate experimental results from formal games into management advice for the COVID-19 pandemic response (Romano et al., 2021). For instance, the personal benefit of defection in the mask-wearing dilemma is determined by how strongly one feels inconvenienced. ...
... First, we note that we studied behavioral intentions in hypothetical scenarios and did not observe naturally occurring protective behaviors. There is also research to suggest that the social dilemma framing of pandemic protection decisions may not be a good model to inform policy making (Romano et al., 2021). Moreover, as we discussed above, most protective behaviors do not perfectly fit the classic social dilemma concept. ...
Although most protective behaviors related to the COVID-19 pandemic come with personal costs, they will produce the largest benefit if everybody cooperates. This study explores two interacting factors that drive cooperation in this tension between private and collective interests. A preregistered experiment (N = 299) examined (a) how the quality of the relation among interacting partners (social proximity), and (b) how focusing on the risk of self-infection versus onward transmission affected intentions to engage in protective behaviors. The results suggested that risk focus was an important moderator of the relation between social proximity and protection intentions. Specifically, participants were more willing to accept the risk of self-infection from close others than from strangers, resulting in less caution toward a friend than toward a distant other. However, when onward transmission was the primary concern, participants were more reluctant to effect transmission to close others, resulting in more caution toward friends than strangers. These findings inform the debate about effective nonclinical measures against the pandemic. Practical implications for risk communication are discussed.
