Cooperation and Trust Across Societies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 2021. Vol. 52. No. 7. P. 622–642.

Romano A., Spadaro G., Balliet D., Joireman J., Van Lissa C., Jin S., Agostini M., Bélanger J. J., Kreienkamp J., PsyCorona Collaboration, Leander N. P.

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: social dilemmas