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https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022120988913
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
1 –21
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0022022120988913
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Special Issue: COVID
Cooperation and Trust Across
Societies During the COVID-19
Pandemic
Angelo Romano*1 , Giuliana Spadaro*2, Daniel Balliet2,
Jeff Joireman3, Caspar Van Lissa4, Shuxian Jin2,
Maximilian Agostini5, Jocelyn J. Bélanger6, Ben Gützkow5,
Jannis Kreienkamp5, and PsyCorona Collaboration,
N. Pontus Leander5
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.
Keywords
cooperation, trust, COVID-19, institutions, social dilemmas, culture
1Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
2Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
3Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA
4Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
5University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
6New York University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
*Angelo Romano and Giuliana Spadaro contributed equally to this work.
Corresponding Authors:
Angelo Romano, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333 AK, Netherlands.
Email: a.romano@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Giuliana Spadaro, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam, 1081HV, Netherlands.
Email: g.spadaro@vu.nl
988913JCCXXX10.1177/0022022120988913Journal of Cross-Cultural PsychologyRomano et al.
research-article2021
2 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
Introduction
The COVID-19 outbreak poses pressing challenges within and between nations to manage the
spread of the disease. To address these challenges, several recent papers have drawn on social
science principles in an effort to understand and change behavior. One common theme in this line
of work is that managing the spread of the disease poses a social dilemma (e.g., a public goods
dilemma; Johnson et al., 2020; Van Bavel et al., 2020), which is defined as a situation in which
individuals experience a conflict between short-term self-interest and long-term interest of the
collective. From this perspective, many of the behaviors required to successfully deal with the
COVID-19 crisis—such as maintaining social distance, frequent hand washing, and self-imposed
quarantine—involve a joint effort where individuals must pay a short-term cost to enhance the
long-term collective good (e.g., health and safety of citizens, well-functioning health care institu-
tions). Drawing on this line of thinking, recent research discusses a variety of social dilemmas
people face when dealing with the COVID-19 crisis and suggests a number of policy interven-
tions based on theory and research on cooperation in social dilemmas (e.g., detachment from
non-cooperators, decentralized and centralized punishment systems; Johnson et al., 2020).
Although theory and research on social dilemmas have often been applied to understand a
range of societal problems (e.g., provision of public goods, management of common resources,
for reviews see Parks et al., 2013; Van Lange et al., 2013), some have cautioned against develop-
ing COVID-19 policy recommendations before first testing key assumptions about the relevance
and applicability of social and behavioral science principles to the pandemic. In one intriguing
critique, IJzerman et al. (2020) suggested that insights intended to inform COVID-19 policy
recommendations should be evaluated within rocket science’s nine stages of Technology Risk
Levels. At stage 1, for example, researchers have reliably observed a phenomenon within a con-
trolled environment. At stage 2, resulting principles should be tested in applied settings. And by
stage 9, a system (e.g., solution) should be effective in multiple applications within real-world
settings. Viewed in this light, offering policy recommendations based on the assumption that
responses to COVID-19 reflect a social dilemma is likely premature. Indeed, although a long
tradition of research on social dilemmas has yielded useful insights into cooperation within con-
trolled lab settings and several real-world settings (Joireman et al., 2004; Ostrom, 1990; Rustagi
et al., 2010; Van Vugt & Samuelson, 1999), no published work has directly tested whether theory
and research on social dilemmas represent a firm basis for advancing COVID-19 policy
recommendations.
With this in mind, the present work examines the usefulness of theory and research on cross-
societal differences in cooperation and trust for predicting early prosocial COVID-19 responses
(e.g., social distancing)—a proxy for first-order cooperation in the dilemma—and support for
behavioral regulation policies aimed at addressing the pandemic (e.g., mandatory quarantine)—
akin to second-order cooperation to support an institution to solve the social dilemma. More
specifically, as illustrated in Figure 1, we test a series of pre-registered hypotheses linking these
COVID-19 responses to established cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust (among
strangers) in social dilemmas (Gächter et al., 2010; Romano et al., 2017) as well as societal and
ecological factors theorized to shape norms of cooperation in social dilemmas (Hruschka &
Henrich, 2013). We evaluate these hypotheses with multi-level models, utilizing country-level
data (for cooperation, trust, and societal factors) to predict individual-level data (for prosocial
COVID-19 responses and support for behavioral regulation policies).
Cooperation, Trust, and Prosocial COVID-19 Responses Across Societies
Many of the actions people are asked to take to deal with COVID-19 involve cooperating with
strangers: they impose a personal cost (e.g., social isolation) to benefit the collective (e.g.,
Romano et al. 3
protecting vulnerable populations; i.e., a social dilemma). Thus, a society’s general tendency
toward cooperation among strangers will likely be linked with specific levels of prosocial
responses to COVID-19. People are also conditional cooperators (Fischbacher et al., 2001), bas-
ing their behavior on what they expect others will do; that is, the expectation that others will
likewise cooperate with the requested actions (Balliet & Van Lange, 2013; Rousseau et al., 1998).
Thus, assuming COVID-19 behaviors pose a social dilemma, prosocial COVID-19 responses
should also be positively linked with cross-societal differences in trust. Previous research on
individual trust in the United States of America (USA) found that trust was related to more self-
reported precautionary and preventive behaviors (e.g., washing hands and social distancing;
Aschwanden et al., 2020). Accordingly, in the present study, we tested the hypotheses that proso-
cial COVID-19 responses (e.g., willingness to donate to pandemic relevant charities, following
guidance to avoid public spaces) would be positively related to country-level cooperation (H1a)
and trust (H1b) among strangers.
We further tested whether several theories that explain cross-societal differences in coopera-
tion among strangers can be applied to understand variation in prosocial COVID-19 responses
(Balliet & Van Lange, 2013; Richerson et al., 2016). In particular, it has been proposed that
higher levels of cooperation among strangers can be found in societies characterized by: (a)
higher quality of institutions, both actual and perceived (e.g., rule of law, government effective-
ness, and institutional trust; Hruschka et al., 2014; Hruschka & Henrich, 2013), (b) higher religi-
osity (e.g., church attendance, religious beliefs, and historical exposure to Western Church (i.e.,
the historical impact of the Western Church on social relations via kinship-regulating policies
(e.g., banning cousin marriage) that encouraged social exchange beyond kin; Norenzayan et al.,
2014; Schulz et al., 2019)), and (c) ecologies with low historical prevalence of pathogens (e.g.,
Fincher & Thornhill, 2012). Drawing on this work, we expect stronger prosocial COVID-19
responses in societies characterized by higher quality of institutions (H2), greater religiosity
(H3), and lower historical prevalence of pathogens (H4).
Cooperation, Trust, and Support for COVID-19 Behavior Regulation Policies
As discussed, cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust are expected to predict more
prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., washing hands, staying at home). Past interdisciplinary
research has also proposed that there exist cross-societal differences in the way different cultures
solve social dilemmas (Yamagishi, Cook, et al., 1998). For instance, societies with lower coop-
eration and trust among strangers are more likely to solve social dilemmas by supporting the
implementation of sanctioning systems that impose costs on free-riders (Yamagishi, Cook, et al.,
1998). In contrast, other societies solve social dilemmas with higher cooperation and trust among
Figure 1. Conceptual model.
Note. Outcomes are individual-level variables. All other boxes include country-level variables.
4 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
unrelated strangers, even in the absence of formal institutions, and therefore are less likely to
support policies that monitor and sanction defectors (individualistic view of culture; Yamagishi,
Cook, et al., 1998). Past research has tested these hypotheses in a limited set of countries (e.g.,
USA versus Japan) and found that societies with lower trust display more dramatic positive
changes in cooperation and trust in the presence (versus absence) of regulations which monitor
and sanction non-cooperative behaviors (institutional view of culture; Yamagishi, 1988;
Yamagishi, Cook, et al., 1998; Yamagishi, Jin, et al., 1998).
Based on this work, we advanced two related hypotheses. First, given that low cooperation
and low trust societies are more likely to rely upon formal sanctioning systems to solve social
dilemmas, such societies should be more likely to support and implement centralized and
decentralized behavioral regulation policies to address COVID-19 (e.g., support for mandatory
quarantine of people exposed to the virus; H5a,b). Second, considering the larger positive
impact of sanctioning systems in societies characterized by low cooperation and low trust
(Yamagishi, 1988), the stringency of policies should have a stronger positive relation with
prosocial COVID-19 responses in societies characterized by low (versus high) cooperation
(H6a) and trust (H6b).
Methods
Prior to acquiring the data, the study proposal and analysis plan were pre-registered on OSF
(https://tinyurl.com/y5yl7seo).1 The research was approved by the Ethics Committees of the
University of Groningen (PSY-1920-S-0390) and New York University Abu Dhabi (HRPP-2020-
42). We used participant-level data collected from the PsyCorona Study, a large-scale cross-
societal study on individual responses to COVID-19 (https://psycorona.org/). A recent published
paper used similar outcome variables from the same dataset (i.e., prosocial COVID-19 responses,
support for behavioral regulations) to address a different set of questions (see Jin et al., 2021).
Participants
Participants were recruited using a snowball sampling strategy. After providing their informed
consent, participants completed the survey in one of 30 possible languages of their choice. The
initial sample consisted of 36,702 participants across 115 societies during almost 2 months (from
March 19th to May 11th 2020). Individuals’ careless responding was accounted for by removing
participants based on overall time of completion (i.e., less than 5 minutes, and providing incon-
sistent responses on reverse-coded items in one of the scales administered in the broader survey).
Societies with fewer than 100 observations were excluded, which resulted in a final sample of
34,526 participants (68% females) from 41 societies (see Table 1 for an overview).
Outcome Variables (Individual-Level)
Individual-level variables were obtained from a subset of variables measured in the Baseline
Survey of the PsyCorona Study. We extracted three sets of items measuring prosocial motiva-
tions, prosocial behaviors, and support for behavioral regulations related to COVID-19 (see
Supplemental Table S3). All scales measuring these variables were used in aggregate levels, with
the mean of available items computed for each scale.
Prosocial COVID-19 responses. Motivation to engage in prosocial behaviors related to the pan-
demic were assessed using a set of four items where participants stated their agreement about
their willingness to (1) help others, (2) make donations, (3) protect vulnerable groups, and (4)
Romano et al. 5
Table 1. Societies, Sample Sizes, Descriptive Statistics, and National Language Available to the
Participants Included in the Analyses.
Society N% Females
% Age range
National language18–34 35–54 55+
Algeria 200 37 51 47 2 Arabic
Argentina 232 69 63 23 13 Spanish
Australia 177 65 25 37 37 English
Bangladesh 155 30 87 9 3 Bengali
Brazil 288 72 28 44 27 Portuguese
Canada 472 72 58 26 15 English, French
Chile 320 76 49 38 12 Spanish
China 389 65 69 26 2 Simplified Chinese, Traditional
Chinese
Croatia 353 80 72 22 5 Croatian
Egypt 902 85 94 4 1 Arabic
France 703 65 43 33 23 French
Germany 596 64 54 31 15 German
Greece 1,854 77 52 37 11 Greek
Hong Kong 243 65 67 25 5 Japanese
Hungary 442 83 78 15 6 Hungarian
Indonesia 1,445 54 69 23 7 Indonesian
Iran 315 54 67 20 6 Farsi
Italy 873 70 71 18 11 Italian
Japan 235 31 89 7 3 Japanese
Kazakhstan 809 56 52 44 3 Russian
Malaysia 892 71 55 36 8 Malay
Netherlands 1,944 69 43 32 20 Dutch
Pakistan 215 70 83 15 1 English, Urdu
Peru 163 64 63 31 5 Spanish
Philippines 496 69 65 29 6 English
Poland 714 82 59 31 8 Polish
Romania 1,655 67 61 31 8 Romanian
Russia 391 78 81 17 2 Russian
Saudi Arabia 483 77 47 43 9 Arabic
Serbia 1,074 80 63 28 8 Serbian
Singapore 245 71 78 18 3 English, Malay, Simplified Chinese
South Africa 258 76 33 43 24 English
South Korea 411 71 91 8 1 Korean
Spain 2,146 68 42 44 14 Spanish
Taiwan 164 70 63 35 2 Traditional Chinese
Thailand 155 58 65 33 3 Thai
Turkey 751 73 54 34 11 Turkish
Ukraine 451 79 54 39 6 Ukrainian
United Kingdom 809 73 42 29 28 English
USA 9,862 63 47 36 16 English
Vietnam 244 76 89 9 1 Vietnamese
Note. N = Sample size for each society. National language indicates which language, among the 30 available languages,
reflected participants’ national language. Percentages might not add up to 100% due to rounding and missing data in
reporting age and gender.
6 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
make sacrifices to deal with COVID-19 pandemic on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), Cronbach’s α = 0.72.
Prosocial behaviors were measured with four items in which people were asked about their
agreement on whether they engaged in two social distancing behaviors (i.e., self-isolation and
avoidance of public spaces) and one health prevention behavior (i.e., washing hands) on a 7-point
Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), Cronbach’s α = 0.66. The fourth
item was a self-report measure of the number of times the respondent went outside in the past
week, answered on a 4-point scale from 1 (I did not leave my home) to 4 (four times or more).
This was considered a separate variable related to prosocial behavior and reverse-scored for
interpretability, with higher scores meaning greater staying at home behavior.
Support for behavioral regulations. We assessed people’s support for behavioral regulations aimed
at curbing COVID-19 by aggregating responses to three items about whether participants would
sign petitions to enforce compliance behaviors to reduce the spread of COVID-19 (i.e., support
for mandatory vaccination, mandatory quarantine to people exposed to the virus, and reporting
people who are suspected to be infected). Items were rated on a 7-point Likert scale from 1
(strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), Cronbach’s α = 0.67.
Predictor Variables (Country-Level)
To operationalize country-level variables to be used as predictors in our model, we utilized data
from previous cross-cultural studies (Falk et al., 2018; Romano et al., 2020) and open access
cross-cultural databases (see Supplemental Table S4).
Cooperation. We operationalized country-level cooperation using a measure of cooperation from
a recent online experiment run in December 2018 across 42 societies (N = 18,411, representative
samples for gender, age, and income; Romano et al., 2020). Participants completed an online
experiment, and were asked to make 12 independent one-shot decisions in a prisoner’s dilemma
game (PD) according to a stranger matching protocol (being paired with a different partner for
each decision, and without receiving any feedback). In the PD, participants were endowed with
10 Monetary Units (MUs) and could decide how many of them to keep for themselves and how
many to give to their partner. They were instructed that each MU given to their partner was
doubled, and that their partner also had the option to give any amount to them, and that this
amount too would be doubled. To make decisions comparable across societies, participants
learned that each MU was worth the equivalent of 2.5 minutes of the average hourly wage in their
country. Cooperation was assessed by the amount of resources invested in the PD (0-10).
As a robustness check of our hypotheses concerning cooperation, we also used a measure of
norms of civic cooperation, retrieved from wave 6 of the World Value Survey (WVS; Inglehart
et al., 2014) and computed by averaging three items assessing the extent to which specific behav-
iors are justifiable (i.e., claiming government benefits that you are not entitled to, avoiding a fare
on public transportation, and cheating on taxes if you have a chance). Items were answered on a
10-point scale from 1 (always justifiable) to 10 (never justifiable).
Trust. We retrieved trust data from the Global Preference Survey (GPS; Falk et al., 2018). This
survey was based on answers from 80,000 participants across 76 societies, in which trust was
measured by means of one item on an 11-point Likert scale (“I assume that people have only the
best intentions”) from 0 (does not describe me at all) to 10 (describes me perfectly). This measure
has been found to be predictive of behavior in the trust game (Falk et al., 2016). As a robustness
check for our hypotheses concerning trust, we also used expectations of others’ cooperation in
the PD as a proxy of trust (Balliet & Van Lange, 2013). Expectations were assessed as stated
Romano et al. 7
beliefs about the amount of resources expected to receive from the participant’s partner in a PD,
using the same study reported above for the measure of cooperation (Romano et al., 2020).
Stringency of COVID-19 policies. Stringency of a country’s COVID-19 policies was operational-
ized as the maximum level of stringent measures a government has taken in response to the
COVID-19 outbreak over a period of around 2 months, extracted from Oxford COVID-19 Gov-
ernment Response Tracker (OxCGRT; Hale et al., 2020). Maximum stringency captures the
maximum level of restrictive policies applied by a society (e.g., school closing, workplace clos-
ing, restriction on internal travel) and ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating more
stringent measures.
Quality of institutions. To operationalize the quality of institutions, we extracted two dimensions
of governance from the World Bank (i.e., rule of law, government effectiveness; World Bank,
2011a, 2011b). Rule of law represents perceptions of the extent to which people have confidence
in and abide by the rules of society. Government effectiveness captures perceptions of the quality
of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from politi-
cal pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the
government’s commitment to such policies. Both estimates range from approximately –2.5 to
2.5, with higher scores reflecting higher quality of institutions.
Religiosity. We used three measures (i.e., importance of religion, religious attendance, historical
exposure to Western Church) to test our hypotheses related to religiosity. Importance of religion
was assessed on a 4-point scale item from 1 (not at all important) to 4 (very important) and reli-
gious attendance on a 7-point scale item assessing how often respondents attended religious
services from 1 (never or practically never) to 7 (more than once a week). Both items were
extracted from wave 6 of the WVS (Inglehart et al., 2014) and reverse-scored so that higher
scores indicated greater religiosity. Exposure to Western Church was calculated as the number of
centuries each country was under the sway of the Western Church prior to 1500 CE, adjusted for
population movements (Schulz et al., 2018, 2019). A region’s Church exposure ranged from 0 to
1000, with higher scores implying a higher level of exposure to the Western Church.
Historical prevalence of pathogens. Historical prevalence of pathogens (e.g., leishmanias, schisto-
somes, trypanosomes) was extracted from Murray and Schaller (2010). This indicator rates prev-
alence of pathogens on a 4-point scale from 0 (completely absent or never reported) to 3 (present
at severe levels or epidemic levels at least once), with higher scores revealing higher historical
prevalence of pathogens.
Severity of the pandemic. We included severity of the pandemic as a control variable. We pre-
registered severity of the pandemic as the number of deaths and cases per million within 14 days
of the first death, using data from Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE; Dong
et al., 2020) Global Cases. However, since there were countries where the pandemic started late,
it was not possible to compare all countries. Therefore, we deviated from our pre-registration and
decided to retrieve severity as the total number of deaths per million to April 21st 2020 (Euro-
pean Center for Disease Prevention and Control; ECDC). Higher scores indicated a more severe
pandemic.
Analytic Strategy
To test our hypotheses, we used mixed-effects models with societies (level-2) as a random factor.
To examine the main effect of cooperation and trust on prosocial COVID-19 responses, we ran
8 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
three sets of models to test our pre-registered hypotheses (H1a,b), each set with one predictor as
a country-level fixed effect (i.e., cooperation and trust). In a second step, we added the interaction
between stringency of policy and cooperation (trust; H6a,b). Moreover, we ran several indepen-
dent models using quality of institutions, religiosity, and historical prevalence of pathogens
(level-2) to predict prosocial COVID-19 responses, and support for behavioral regulations to
address the pandemic (level-1; H2, H3, H4). Finally, to analyze the relation between cooperation,
trust and stringency of actual COVID-19 policies, we used simple regressions (as all indicators
are measured at the country level; H5a,b). All models included severity of the pandemic at the
time of data collection as a control variable, and models using individual-level data additionally
controlled for age and gender. All pre-registered hypotheses were tested using one-sided tests,
whereas two-sided tests were used to perform robustness checks and analyses which were not
pre-registered. We used all available data, without performing imputation of missing data.
Importantly, as there is variation in the number of societies that overlap between different datas-
ets, the actual number of societies included in each model may be different than the original
number of societies collected in each dataset.
Results
Cooperation, Trust, and Prosocial COVID-19 Responses Across Societies
First, we tested whether societies characterized by higher levels of cooperation and trust
among strangers reported more prosocial motivations and behaviors related to COVID-19
(H1a,b). An 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 coop-
eration (p = .725) and trust (p = .056) both had a non-significant relationship with prosocial
motivations (Figure 2a and d).
Next, we tested our hypotheses on prosocial behaviors and staying at home behavior. We
found that prosocial behaviors were not predicted by either cooperation (p = .494) or trust
(p = .500; Figure 2b and c). Similarly, cooperation (p = .709) and trust (p = .444) had non-signifi-
cant relationships with staying at home behavior (Figure 2c and f). In sum, results failed to sup-
port 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., 2020).
Finally, we tested whether individuals in societies characterized by higher levels of institu-
tional quality and religiosity, and lower levels of historical prevalence of pathogens, reported
more prosocial responses related to COVID-19 (H2, H3, H4). None of the cross-societal indica-
tors (see Table 3) used to operationalize institutional quality, religiosity, or ecology were signifi-
cantly related to prosocial motivations (p-values > .057). We only found that societies
characterized by higher importance of religion reported higher likelihood of staying at home
behavior (b = 0.235, p = .001). Also, societies characterized by higher degree of church atten-
dance also reported higher likelihood of staying at home behavior (b = 0.209, p = .005).
Cooperation, Trust, and COVID-19 Policies Across Societies
We next tested whether individuals in societies characterized by lower cooperation and trust
would report more support for centralized and decentralized regulations related to COVID-19
(H5a,b). We tested these hypotheses using two different dependent variables: first by analyzing
9
Table 2. Mixed-Effects Models of Cross-Societal Differences in Cooperation and Trust Predicting Individual-Level Prosocial COVID-19 Responses During the
COVID-19 Pandemic.
Predictor N
COVID-19 prosocial motivations COVID-19 prosocial behaviors Staying at home behavior
b SE t p b SE t p b SE t p
Cooperation 29
Cooperation −0.059 0.098 −0.606 .725* 0.001 0.067 0.015 .494* −0.062 0.110 −0.558 .709*
Age 0.012 0.005 2.547 .011 0.001 0.004 0.273 .785 −0.064 0.004 −15.099 <.001
Gender (Male = 1) −0.164 0.014 −11.368 <.001 −0.258 0.011 −23.668 <.001 −0.204 0.013 −15.728 <.001
Gender (Other = 1) 0.085 0.084 1.011 .312 −0.154 0.063 −2.427 .015 −0.223 0.075 −2.955 .003
Trust 33
Trust 0.130 0.079 1.636 .056* 0.000 0.048 0.001 .500* 0.011 0.077 0.143 .444*
Age 0.012 0.005 2.539 .011 0.001 0.003 0.193 .847 −0.059 0.004 −14.154 <.001
Gender (Male = 1) −0.130 0.014 −9.189 <.001 −0.252 0.011 −23.812 <.001 −0.221 0.013 −17.579 <.001
Gender (Other = 1) 0.046 0.081 0.571 .568 −0.192 0.060 −3.175 .002 −0.242 0.072 −3.373 .001
Note. N = the number of societies included in the analyses.
Severity of the pandemic, gender, and age were included as a control in each model.
*p-values are one-tailed.
10
Figure 2. Pearson’s correlations between cooperation, trust, and COVID-19 responses.
Note. (a) Correlation between cooperation and prosocial COVID-19 motivations (b) Correlation between cooperation and prosocial COVID-19 behaviors (c) Correlation between
cooperation and staying at home behavior (d) Correlation between trust and prosocial COVID-19 motivations (e) Correlation between trust and prosocial COVID-19 behaviors
(f) Correlation between trust and staying at home behavior.
11
Table 3. Mixed-Effects Models of Cross-societal Indicators Predicting Individual-Level Prosocial COVID-19 Responses During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Cross-societal indicator N
COVID-19 prosocial motivations COVID-19 prosocial behaviors Staying at home behavior
b SE t p b SE t p b SE t p
Quality of institutions
Rule of law 41 −0.013 0.070 −0.183 .572 –0.106 0.038 −2.790 .996 −0.247 0.055 −4.518 .999
Government effectiveness 41 −0.020 0.067 −0.305 .619 –0.100 0.036 −2.752 .996 −0.238 0.052 −4.602 .999
Confidence in government 28 0.088 0.084 1.048 .152 –0.011 0.053 −0.208 .582 −0.016 0.081 −0.200 .578
Confidence in parliament 28 0.073 0.080 0.916 .184 –0.005 0.050 −0.097 .538 −0.020 0.077 −0.260 .601
Confidence in courts 28 0.029 0.056 0.511 .307 –0.055 0.033 −1.641 .943 −0.090 0.051 −1.781 .957
Confidence in the police 28 0.044 0.063 0.690 .248 –0.034 0.039 −0.870 .804 −0.119 0.056 −2.119 .978
Confidence in armed forces 27 0.033 0.102 0.325 .374 –0.089 0.058 −1.535 .931 −0.021 0.097 −0.214 .584
Religion
Importance of religion 28 0.140 0.085 1.640 .057 0.055 0.054 1.018 .159 0.235 0.071 3.300 .001
Church attendance 28 0.086 0.089 0.964 .172 0.051 0.055 0.918 .184 0.208 0.076 2.753 .005
Exposure to Western Church 31 0.013 0.074 0.178 .430 –0.003 0.047 −0.055 .522 −0.154 0.069 −2.225 .983
Ecology
Historical prevalence of pathogens 37 0.183 0.076 2.415 .011 0.073 0.050 1.464 .076 0.226 0.077 2.948 .003
Note. N = the number of societies included in the analyses.
Severity of the pandemic was included as a control in each model.
All p-values are one-tailed.
12 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
individual-level support for behavioral regulation policies, and then by whether countries actu-
ally implemented stricter policies. The intraclass correlation of the mixed-effects regression
showed that there existed a substantial amount of between-society variation in support for behav-
ioral regulations (ICC = 0.150). In a mixed-effects regression (Table 4), we did not find that trust
or cooperation had a significant relationship with support for behavioral regulations (coopera-
tion: p = .154, trust: p = .962). Men, compared to women, were associated with lower support for
behavioral regulations (see Table 4).
Next, we regressed the stringency of measures taken by each society on cooperation and trust
and found stringency was unrelated to both cooperation (p = .864) and trust (p = .227; Table 5).
We then tested the hypothesis that cooperation and trust each interacted with stringency of
policies to predict prosocial motivations (H6a,b). In a mixed-effects regression (Table 6), neither
cooperation (p = .109) or trust (p = .744) significantly interacted with stringency of policies in
predicting prosocial motivations. We then tested the hypothesis that cooperation (and trust) inter-
acted with the stringency of policies to predict prosocial COVID-19 behaviors (H6a,b). We did
not find support for an interaction between stringency of policies and cooperation (or trust) for
either prosocial behavior (p-values > .534) or staying at home behavior (p-values > .334). See
Table 7 for an overview of the hypotheses.
Table 5. Simple Regressions of Cross-Societal Differences in Cooperation and Trust Predicting
Between Country Variation in the Stringency of Policies During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Predictor N
Stringency of policies
b SE t p
Cooperation 32 0.289 0.26 1.111 .864
Trust 38 −0.128 0.169 −0.756 .227
Note. N = the number of societies included in the analyses.
Severity of the pandemic was included as a control in each model.
All p-values are one-tailed.
Table 4. Mixed-Effects Models of Cross-Societal Differences in Cooperation and Trust Predicting
Individual-Level Support for Behavioral Regulations During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Predictor N
Support for behavioral regulations
b SE t p
Cooperation 29
Cooperation −0.122 0.118 −1.038 .154*
Age −0.049 0.005 −9.074 <.001
Gender (Male = 1) −0.131 0.016 −8.042 <.001
Gender (Other = 1) −0.212 0.095 −2.234 .025
Trust 33
Trust 0.181 0.099 1.841 .962*
Age −0.049 0.005 −9.396 <.001
Gender (Male = 1) −0.123 0.016 −7.765 <.001
Gender (Other = 1) −0.278 0.091 −3.059 .002
Note. N = the number of societies included in the analyses.
Severity of the pandemic, age, and gender were included as a control in each model.
*p-values are one-tailed.
13
Table 6. Mixed-Effect Models of Cross-Societal Differences in Cooperation, Trust, and Their Interaction With Stringency of Policies Predicting Individual-Level
Prosocial COVID-19 Responses During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Predictor N
COVID-19 prosocial motivations COVID-19 prosocial behaviors Staying at home behavior
b SE t p b SE t p b SE t p
Cooperation 29 −0.131 0.113 −1.159 .871 −0.005 0.078 −0.069 .527 −0.081 0.106 −0.761 .773
Cooperation × Stringency 29 −0.091 0.072 −1.265 .109 0.004 0.050 0.086 .534 0.033 0.068 0.484 .684
Trust 33 0.098 0.095 1.027 .157 −0.005 0.058 −0.093 .537 0.088 0.086 1.029 .156
Trust × Stringency 33 0.063 0.094 0.665 .744 0.021 0.057 0.370 .643 −0.037 0.085 −0.434 .334
Notes. N = the number of societies included in the analyses. × = interaction term.
Severity of the pandemic was included as a control in each model.
All p-values are one-tailed.
14 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
Additional Analyses: Robustness Checks, Cross-Validations, and Generalizations
We ran several additional analyses to test whether our results were robust across different (1)
operationalizations of cooperation and trust, (2) model specifications, and (3) samples. First,
we ran models using a different measure of cooperation (norms of civic cooperation) and trust
(expectations of others’ cooperation). We replicated most of our findings. Norms of civic
cooperation had no statistically significant relations with COVID-19 responses or policies
(p-values > .095; see SI). We found expectations of cooperation were weakly associated with
some prosocial COVID-19 responses (see SI). However, replicating the findings reported
above, expectations of cooperation were unrelated to, support for policies (p = .997), and
stringency of policies (p = .634). Overall, these analyses support our conclusion that coopera-
tion and trust among strangers do not have a robust and consistent link with COVID-19
behavioral responses and policies.
Table 7. Overview of the Support for the Pre-Registered Hypotheses.
# Hypothesis Supported
1a Country-level cooperation would be positively related to prosocial COVID-19 responses.
Motivations No
Behaviors No
1b Country-level trust would be positively related to prosocial COVID-19 responses.
Motivations Partly1
Behaviors Partly1
2 Prosocial COVID-19 responses would be positively related to quality of institutions.
Motivations No
Behaviors No
3 Prosocial COVID-19 responses would be positively related to religiosity.
Motivations No
Behaviors Partly
4 Prosocial COVID-19 responses would be negatively related to historical prevalence of pathogens.
Motivations No
Behaviors No
5a Societies with low, compared to high, cooperation would be more likely to support and
implement behavioral regulations and stringent policies to address COVID-19.
Support for behavioral regulations No
Stringency of policies No
5b Societies with low, compared to high, trust would be more likely to support and implement
behavioral regulations and stringent policies to address COVID-19.
Support for behavioral regulations No
Stringency of policies No
6a Stringency of policies would negatively interact with cooperation to predict prosocial COVID-19
responses.
Motivations No
Behaviors No
6b Stringency of policies would negatively interact with trust to
predict prosocial COVID-19 responses.
Motivations No
Behaviors No
Note. 1Support for this hypothesis was found only with one of the two operationalizations of trust (i.e., expectations
of others’ cooperation). Results are presented in detail in the SI.
Romano et al. 15
Secondly, we tested our pre-registered hypotheses using a less restrictive threshold to deter-
mine inclusion of societies in the analyses (N > 30). In this way, we could replicate the confirma-
tory analyses with a broader set of countries (N = 56). Again, the results of this robustness check
yielded the same pattern of results, compared to findings obtained by the models including larger
samples (N = 100; see SI).
As a further robustness check, we tested our hypotheses on additional data from the same
survey which only included age-gender representative samples (N = 25,440 participants from 24
countries) collected between April 10th and May 11th 2020 by the PsyCorona team (see SI). This
allowed us to test the same hypotheses with the same variables (both at the country and at the
individual level) but with a different sampling strategy. Again, the results of this robustness check
confirmed our findings and provided the same pattern of results obtained analyzing responses
gained through snowball sampling (see SI).
Finally, we tested our hypotheses on a different global COVID-19 dataset including indi-
vidual COVID-19 responses collected during a similar timeframe (between March 20th and
April 5th 2020), recently released online as open access (Fetzer et al., 2020). The survey was
based on answers to a questionnaire available in 69 languages from 112,136 participants across
170 societies, recruited through snowball sampling. We retrieved three items that measured
similar prosocial COVID-19 behaviors (i.e., “I stayed at home,” “I washed my hands more
frequently than the month before,” “I did not attend social gatherings”). Participants were
asked the extent to which these three statements described their behavior in the past week from
0 (does not apply) to 100 (applies very much). Consistent with our main findings, cross- societal
variation in cooperation and trust failed to significantly predict prosocial COVID-19 behaviors
across societies (p-values > .108; see SI).
Discussion
Recent review papers have suggested that many behaviors required to tackle the COVID-19
pandemic (e.g., maintaining social distance, washing hands, self-imposed quarantine) can be
construed as social dilemmas, involving a conflict between short-term immediate self-interests
and long-term collective benefits (Johnson et al., 2020; Van Bavel et al., 2020). If the COVID-19
pandemic indeed creates a social dilemma, then research on cross-societal differences on coop-
eration and trust should help predict responses to COVID-19 and potentially offer insights into
policies that could regulate behaviors in response to COVID-19 (Johnson et al., 2020).
To address this question, we utilized a survey across 41 societies linking country-level pre-
dictors (cooperation, trust, institutional quality, religion, historical prevalence of pathogens)
with individual-level prosocial COVID-19 responses, behaviors, and support for behavioral
regulations to address COVID-19. Results revealed substantial cross-societal variation in indi-
viduals’ self-reported willingness to engage in prosocial COVID-19 behaviors (e.g., social dis-
tancing, donating to charities), self-reported actual prosocial COVID-19 behaviors (e.g., hand
washing, staying at home), and support for behavioral regulation policies (e.g., mandatory quar-
antine, vaccination). We applied theory and research on cooperation and trust across societies to
predict these outcomes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we did not find any con-
sistent support for our pre-registered hypotheses that these cross-societal differences in proso-
cial COVID-19 responses and support for policies would be associated with country-level
differences in cooperation or trust among strangers. These results were replicated using an addi-
tional dataset which included a larger sample of countries, and also when restricting the analy-
ses in the present study to only include countries with age-gender representative samples of
around 1,000 participants.
We also examined how several societal-level factors may play a role in responding to the
pandemic. Several theories explain why societies differ in cooperation among strangers,
16 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
emphasizing the quality of institutions (Hruschka & Henrich, 2013), religiosity (Norenzayan
et al., 2014), and historical prevalence of pathogens (Fincher & Thornhill, 2012). The current
results, however, revealed no consistent association between these cross-societal factors and pro-
social COVID-19 responses. We also did not find consistent support for our hypotheses that
societies characterized by lower levels of cooperation (and trust) would implement stricter gov-
ernment policies. Societies with lower cooperation and trust also did not display larger increases
in prosocial COVID-19 responses in relation to more stringent rules. Taken together, the results
of this study question the value of using cross-cultural research on social dilemmas to guide
policy making in response to the pandemic.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic may still create a large-scale public goods dilemma among
strangers, cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers may not be relevant
to individual decision-making in response to an emerging pandemic. Instead, COVID-19
responses may be understood in light of (1) individual differences in tendencies to trust and coop-
erate with strangers (Aschwanden et al., 2020), (2) proself motivations instead of prosocial, that
is, people may engage in costly self-sacrifices (e.g., social distancing) to benefit themselves, their
families, co-habitants, co-workers, and/or neighbors (not anonymous strangers), (3) a psychol-
ogy functionally specialized for disease avoidance (Schaller, 2011; Tybur et al., 2013) instead of
cooperation, and/or (4) differences in information about the pandemic across societies, which
might play a major role in shifting how people perceive this situation (independent of whether the
situation is truly a social dilemma). Accordingly, people may not even recognize their mutual
dependence with broader societal members, and could frame the situation entirely different than
a public goods dilemma, such as total independence from others (i.e., own and others’ social
distancing decisions don’t affect others’ outcomes) or as a situation with asymmetrical depen-
dence (i.e., only the elderly benefit from one’s costly cooperation; Balliet et al., 2017; Gerpott
et al., 2018).
Another possibility is that COVID-19 does not create a public goods dilemma, but instead
creates a different interdependent situation, which would produce a different set of expectations
for behavior. For example, social distancing during the dilemma may best be understood as a
chicken game (Smith & Price, 1973), where the most favorable outcome for each person is doing
the opposite of what others choose to do. In this frame, costly self-sacrifices may result in the best
outcome for an individual when others are not engaging in costly self-sacrifices (e.g., social dis-
tancing), but when other people are engaging in these costly behaviors, then people would
achieve the best outcome by not making the sacrifices. However, in this kind of situation, every-
one would receive a better outcome if each person engages in social distancing, relative to when
each person does not. If the COVID-19 pandemic represents a chicken game, this would question
the relevance of cooperation and trust in public goods dilemmas to understand responses to the
pandemic. Indeed, we tested a number of pre-registered hypotheses based on the assumption that
cooperation in a public goods dilemma among strangers would be key to understand variation
across societies in responses to the pandemic, but we failed to find consistent support for these
hypotheses across different datasets. Therefore, researchers wanting to extend implications of
cross-societal cooperation research to policy in response to the pandemic would be advised to
follow along these lines of inquiry, and collect data to test their assumptions and theory prior to
making policy recommendations.
One limitation of the present research is worth noting. We used country-level indicators of
cooperation and trust. Although we found considerable between-country variation in responses
to the pandemic, this variation was not explained by cross-societal differences in cooperation and
trust. While cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust have been widely used in past
research to predict individual behaviors across societies (e.g., Gächter & Schulz, 2016; Romano
et al., 2017; Schulz et al., 2019), future research can measure individual differences in coopera-
tion and trust, and then examine whether these measures are able to detect cross-societal
Romano et al. 17
variation in individual behaviors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this limitation,
the present study embodies several strengths, including (1) being guided by theory and pre-reg-
istered hypotheses about cooperation across societies, (2) utilizing a sample comprised of a large
and varied set of societies, (3) revealing results which were robust across different operational-
izations of the predictor variables (i.e., cooperation and trust) and outcome variables (i.e., moti-
vations, behaviors), and (4) cross-validating the results with alternative datasets which comprised
even larger number of societies and representative samples, addressing the possible concern that
our results may be due to the sampling strategy and methods (see SI).
To conclude, we applied theory of human cooperation across societies to generate pre-
registered hypotheses about prosocial COVID-19 responses across 41 societies and found no
consistent support for these hypotheses. Previous papers have claimed that a social dilemma
framework can guide policy making in response to the pandemic, without offering any empirical
evidence about whether the pandemic actually poses a social dilemma, and whether theory and
research from this domain apply to predict variation in behaviors in response to the pandemic. To
guide evidence-based policies to address the pandemic, it is necessary to offer robust evidence
that previous theory and research apply to this context. Cooperation may still be relevant to
understanding responses to the pandemic, but the current findings strongly suggest the need to
revisit fundamental assumptions about the nature of COVID-19 responses and do the relevant
empirical research prior to making policy recommendations.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article: This research received support from the New York University Abu Dhabi (VCDSF/75-
71015), the University of Groningen (Sustainable Society & Ubbo Emmius Fund), and the Instituto de
Salud Carlos III (COV20/00086). Data are available upon request.
PsyCorona Collaboration
Georgios Abakoumkin University of Thessaly
Jamilah Hanum Abdul Khaiyom International Islamic University Malaysia
Vjollca Ahmedi Pristine University
Handan Akkas Ankara Science University
Carlos A. Almenara Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas
Mohsin Atta University of Sargodha
Sabahat Cigdem Bagci Sabanci University
Sima Basel New York University Abu Dhabi
Edona Berisha Kida Pristine University
Nicholas R. Buttrick University of Virginia
Phatthanakit Chobthamkit Thammasat University
Hoon-Seok Choi Sungkyunkwan University
Mioara Cristea Heriot Watt University
Sára Csaba ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Kaja Damnjanovic University of Belgrade
Ivan Danyliuk Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
(continued)
18 Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 00(0)
Arobindu Dash Leuphana University of Luneburg
Daniela Di Santo University “La Sapienza”, Rome
Karen M. Douglas University of Kent
Violeta Enea Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi
Daiane Gracieli Faller New York University Abu Dhabi
Gavan Fitzsimons Duke University
Alexandra Gheorghiu Alexandru Ioan Cuza University
Ángel Gómez Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Qing Han University of Bristol
Mai Helmy Menoufia University
Joevarian Hudiyana Universitas Indonesia
Bertus F. Jeronimus University of Groningen
Ding-Yu Jiang National Chung-Cheng University
Veljko Jovanović University of Novi Sad
Željka Kamenov University of Zagreb
Anna Kende ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Shian-Ling Keng Yale-NUS College
Tra Thi Thanh Kieu HCMC University of Education
Yasin Koc University of Groningen
Kamila Kovyazina Independent researcher, Kazakhstan
Inna Kozytska Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Joshua Krause University of Groningen
Arie W. Kruglanski University of Maryland
Anton Kurapov Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Maja Kutlaca Durham University
Nóra Anna Lantos ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Edward P. Lemay, Jr. University of Maryland
Cokorda Bagus Jaya Lesmana Udayana University
Winnifred R. Louis University of Queensland
Adrian Lueders Université Clermont-Auvergne
Najma Iqbal Malik University of Sargodha
Anton Martinez University of Sheffield
Kira O. McCabe Vanderbilt University
Mirra Noor Milla Universitas Indonesia
Jasmina Mehulić University of Zagreb
Idris Mohammed Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto
Erica Molinario University of Maryland
Manuel Moyano University of Cordoba
Hayat Muhammad University of Peshawar
Silvana Mula University “La Sapienza”, Rome
Hamdi Muluk Universitas Indonesia
Solomiia Myroniuk University of Groningen
Reza Najafi Islamic Azad University, Rasht Branch
Claudia F. Nisa New York University Abu Dhabi
Boglárka Nyúl ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Paul A. O’Keefe Yale-NUS College
Jose Javier Olivas Osuna National Distance Education University (UNED)
Evgeny N. Osin National Research University Higher School of Economics
Joonha Park NUCB Business School
Gennaro Pica University of Camerino
(continued)
Romano et al. 19
ORCID iDs
Angelo Romano https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7502-9268
Maximilian Agostini https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6435-7621
N. Pontus Leander https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3073-5038
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Note
1. Compared to the pre-registration, we changed the order of the hypotheses.
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