Changes in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries

Andrighetto G 1 , Szekely A 2 , Guido A 2 , Gelfand M 3 , Abernathy J 4 , Arikan G 5 Show all authors , Aycan Z 6 , Bankar S 7 , Barrera D 8 , Basnight-Brown D 9 , Belaus A 10 , Berezina E 11 , Blumen S 12 , Boski P 13 , Bui HTT 14 , Cárdenas JC 15 , Čekrlija Đ 16 , de Barra M 17 , de Zoysa P 18 , Dorrough A 19 , Engelmann JB 20 , Euh H 21 , Fiedler S 22 , Foster-Gimbel O 23 , Freitas G 24 , Fülöp M 25 , Gardarsdottir RB 26 , Gill CMHD 11 , Glöckner A 19 , Graf S 27 , Grigoryan A 28 , Growiec K 13 , Hashimoto H 29 , Hopthrow T 30 , Hřebíčková M 27 , Imada H 31 , Kamijo Y 32 , Kapoor H 33 , Kashima Y 34 , Khachatryan N 28 , Kharchenko N 35 , León D 36 , Leslie LM 23 , Li Y 37 , Liik K 38 , Liuzza MT 39 , Maitner AT 40 , Mamidi P 7 , McArdle M 5 , Medhioub I 41 , Teixeira MLM 42 , Mentser S 43 , Morales F 44 , Narayanan J 45 , Nitta K 46 , Nussinson R 47 , Onyedire NG 48 , Onyishi IE 48 , Osin E 49 , Özden S 6 , Panagiotopoulou P 50 , Pereverziev O 51 , Perez-Floriano LR 52 , Pirttilä-Backman AM 53 , Pogosyan M 54 , Raver J 55 , Reyna C 10 , Rodrigues RB 56 , Romanò S 57 , Romero PP 58 , Sakki I 53 , Sánchez A 59 , Sherbaji S 40 , Simpson B 4 , Spadoni L 60 , Stamkou E 61 , Travaglino GA 31 , Van Lange PAM 62 , Winata FF 63 , Zein RA 63 , Zhang QP 64 , Eriksson K 65

Affiliations 

  • 1 Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy, Rome, Italy. [email protected]
  • 2 Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy, Rome, Italy
  • 3 Graduate School of Business and Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, USA
  • 4 Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA
  • 5 Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
  • 6 Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
  • 7 Ashoka University, Sonipat, India
  • 8 Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin, Italy
  • 9 United States International University - Africa, Nairobi, Kenya
  • 10 Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIPsi), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET); CABA, Córdoba, Argentina
  • 11 Sunway University, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia
  • 12 Departamento de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú
  • 13 SWPS University, Warsaw, Poland
  • 14 Hanoi National University of Education, Hanoi, Vietnam
  • 15 Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
  • 16 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • 17 Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, UK
  • 18 Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka
  • 19 Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
  • 20 Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making (CREED), Amsterdam School of Economics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 21 Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, USA
  • 22 Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria
  • 23 Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, USA
  • 24 Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
  • 25 HUN-REN Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Research Centre of Natural Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
  • 26 Faculty of Psychology, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
  • 27 Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic
  • 28 Department of Personality Psychology, Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia
  • 29 Osaka Metropolitan University, Osaka, Japan
  • 30 School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
  • 31 Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
  • 32 Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
  • 33 Department of Psychology, Monk Prayogshala, Mumbai, India
  • 34 Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
  • 35 Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Kyiv, Ukraine
  • 36 DeJusticia, Bogotá, Colombia
  • 37 Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
  • 38 School of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia
  • 39 Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, "Magna Græcia" University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy
  • 40 Department of Psychology, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
  • 41 Department of Finance and Investment, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 42 Presbyterian Mackenzie University, São Paulo, Brazil
  • 43 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
  • 44 Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile
  • 45 Northeastern University, Boston, USA
  • 46 Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan
  • 47 Department of Education and Psychology, The Open University of Israel, Ra'anana, Israel
  • 48 Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria
  • 49 HSE University, Moscow, Russia
  • 50 Department of Education and Social Work, University of Patras, Patras, Greece
  • 51 POLLSTER, Kiev, Ukraine
  • 52 Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile
  • 53 Faculty of Social Sciences, Social Psychology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
  • 54 Leadership and Management, Amsterdam Business School (ABS), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 55 Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada
  • 56 Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal
  • 57 Department of Culture, Politics, and Society, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
  • 58 School of Economics, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador
  • 59 Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, Spain
  • 60 Department of Economics and Law, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Cassino (FR), Italy
  • 61 Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 62 Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 63 Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia
  • 64 Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, P. R. China
  • 65 Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm, Sweden
Nat Commun, 2024 Feb 16;15(1):1436.
PMID: 38365869 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44999-5

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, using survey data from 30,431 respondents in 43 countries recorded before and in the early stages following the emergence of COVID-19. Using variation in disease intensity, we shed light on the mechanisms predicting changes in social norm measures. We find evidence that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased while tightness and punishing frequency slightly decreased but observe no evidence for a robust change in most other norms. Thus, at least in the short term, our findings suggest that cultures are largely stable to pandemic threats except in those norms, hand washing in this case, that are perceived to be directly relevant to dealing with the collective threat.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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