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Cooperation and Trust Across Societies During the COVID-19 Pandemic
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.