Changes in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries.
Journal
Nature communications
ISSN: 2041-1723
Titre abrégé: Nat Commun
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101528555
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
16 Feb 2024
16 Feb 2024
Historique:
received:
14
09
2021
accepted:
12
01
2024
medline:
17
2
2024
pubmed:
17
2
2024
entrez:
16
2
2024
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
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.
Identifiants
pubmed: 38365869
doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-44999-5
pii: 10.1038/s41467-024-44999-5
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
1436Subventions
Organisme : Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation)
ID : 2016.0167.
Organisme : Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (Ministry of Education, University and Research)
ID : 20178TRM3F
Organisme : Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research)
ID : 019.183SG.001
Informations de copyright
© 2024. The Author(s).
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