34 research outputs found
Social and moral psychology of COVID-19 across 69 countries
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and
social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout
the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change.
To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health
behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This
dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of
COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around
the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health
attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April
and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs
and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being;
moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both
raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric
evaluations of key variables.Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL
National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic
Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.publishedVersio
Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning
At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multinational data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar results were found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, and collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-neglible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic.Peer reviewe
National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic (vol 13, 517, 2022) : National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic (Nature Communications, (2022), 13, 1, (517), 10.1038/s41467-021-27668-9)
Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2022.In this article the author name ‘Agustin Ibanez’ was incorrectly written as ‘Augustin Ibanez’. The original article has been corrected.Peer reviewe
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National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic.
Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = -0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics
To which world regions does the valence–dominance model of social perception apply?
Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of
how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social
judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether
these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across
11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy,
the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated
dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance
model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed
when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution.C.L. was supported by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF VRG13-007);
L.M.D. was supported by ERC 647910 (KINSHIP); D.I.B. and N.I. received funding from
CONICET, Argentina; L.K., F.K. and Á. Putz were supported by the European Social
Fund (EFOP-3.6.1.-16-2016-00004; ‘Comprehensive Development for Implementing
Smart Specialization Strategies at the University of Pécs’). K.U. and E. Vergauwe were
supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PZ00P1_154911 to E.
Vergauwe). T.G. is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada (SSHRC). M.A.V. was supported by grants 2016-T1/SOC-1395 (Comunidad
de Madrid) and PSI2017-85159-P (AEI/FEDER UE). K.B. was supported by a grant
from the National Science Centre, Poland (number 2015/19/D/HS6/00641). J. Bonick
and J.W.L. were supported by the Joep Lange Institute. G.B. was supported by the Slovak
Research and Development Agency (APVV-17-0418). H.I.J. and E.S. were supported
by a French National Research Agency ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ programme grant
(ANR-15-IDEX-02). T.D.G. was supported by an Australian Government Research
Training Program Scholarship. The Raipur Group is thankful to: (1) the University
Grants Commission, New Delhi, India for the research grants received through its
SAP-DRS (Phase-III) scheme sanctioned to the School of Studies in Life Science;
and (2) the Center for Translational Chronobiology at the School of Studies in Life
Science, PRSU, Raipur, India for providing logistical support. K. Ask was supported by
a small grant from the Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg. Y.Q. was
supported by grants from the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (5184035) and CAS
Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology. N.A.C. was supported
by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (R010138018). We
acknowledge the following research assistants: J. Muriithi and J. Ngugi (United States
International University Africa); E. Adamo, D. Cafaro, V. Ciambrone, F. Dolce and E.
Tolomeo (Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro); E. De Stefano (University of Padova);
S. A. Escobar Abadia (University of Lincoln); L. E. Grimstad (Norwegian School of
Economics (NHH)); L. C. Zamora (Franklin and Marshall College); R. E. Liang and R.
C. Lo (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman); A. Short and L. Allen (Massey University, New
Zealand), A. Ateş, E. Güneş and S. Can Özdemir (Boğaziçi University); I. Pedersen and T.
Roos (Åbo Akademi University); N. Paetz (Escuela de Comunicación Mónica Herrera);
J. Green (University of Gothenburg); M. Krainz (University of Vienna, Austria); and B.
Todorova (University of Vienna, Austria). The funders had no role in study design, data
collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/am2023BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog
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Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning
At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multinational data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar results were found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, and collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-neglible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic
Author Correction: National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic
Correction to: Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27668-9, published online 26 January 2022