Publication: Changes in social norms during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic across 43 countries
Program
KU-Authors
KU Authors
Co-Authors
Andrighetto, Giulia
Szekely, Aron
Guido, Andrea
Gelfand, Michele
Abemathy, Jered
Arıkan, Gizem
Barrera, Davide
Basnight-Brown, Dana
Belaus, Anabel
Berezina, Elizaveta
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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. Tightness-looseness theory predicts that social norms strengthen following threat. Here the authors test this and find that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased, but no evidence was observed for a robust change in most other norms.
Source
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Subject
Umbrella movement
Citation
Has Part
Source
Nature Communications
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DOI
10.1038/s41467-024-44999-5