Towards a globally collaborative behavioral science: an organizational approach from pandemic psychology

Abstract

The PsyCorona collaboration is a research project to examine processes involved in the COVID-19 pandemic, such as behavior that curbs virus transmission, which may implicate social norms, cooperation, and self-regulation. The study also examines psychosocial consequences of physical distancing strategies and societal lockdown, such as frustration of psychological and social needs, economic stressors, relationship strains, prejudice, psychological stress, and deteriorating mental health (e.g., Brooks et al., 2020). Related consequences were observed in past epi- demics such as the 1918 flu pandemic (Dolan, 2020; Hon- igsbaum, 2019; Jeronimus, 2020). A global collaboration allows us to study the role of culture, and to make general- izable predictions on societal responses to virus infections. Culture may influence our living arrangements and how easily we adjust and cooperate at the societal level to miti- gate virus transmission. Moreover, because the evolving coronavirus pandemic has implications for ongoing psy- chological and social development, we continue to track people over time. The study was launched in March 2020, mere days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. We took a holistic approach to this global challenge. The study assesses virus-related and lockdown-related behavior, cognition, emotion, and moti- vation in tens of thousands of participants in dozens of countries around the world (for details, see Kreienkamp et al., 2020). The project provides the opportunity for examining individual-level processes across diverse con- texts as well as collective-level processes over time. Respondents who volunteered for the longitudinal study completed weekly follow-up assessments through mid- June, and then monthly assessments thereafter