No abstract

Social norms can coordinate individuals and groups during collective threats. Pandemic-related social norms (e.g., wearing masks, social distancing) emerged to curb the spread of COVID-19. However, little is known about the psychological consequences of the emerging norms. We conducted three experiments cross-culturally, during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic in China (Study 1), the recovery period in China (Study 2), and the severe period in the United States and Canada (Study 3). Across the three studies, we first distinguished the opposite effects of social norms and risk perception on individuals’ psychological characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic and further revealed that individuals who perceived stronger pandemic norms reported a lower level of COVID-19 risk perception, which in turn would be associated with fewer negative emotions, lower pressure, more positive emotions, higher levels of trusts, and more confidence in fighting against COVID-19. Our findings show that perceived tighter social norms are linked to beneficial psychological outcomes. This research helps governments, institutions, and individuals understand the mechanism and benefits of social norms during the pandemic, thereby facilitating policy formulation and better responses to social crises.

Supernatural beliefs are common in every human society, and people frequently invoke the supernatural to explain natural (e.g., storms, disease outbreaks) and social (e.g., murder, warfare) events. However, evolutionary and psychological theories of religion raise competing hypotheses about whether supernatural explanations should more commonly focus on natural or social phenomena. Here we test these hypotheses with a global analysis of supernatural explanations in 109 geographically and culturally diverse societies. We find that supernatural explanations are more prevalent for natural phenomena than for social phenomena, an effect that generalizes across regions and subsistence styles and cannot be reduced to the frequency of natural vs. social phenomena or common cultural ancestry. We also find that supernatural explanations of social phenomena only occur in societies that also have supernatural explanations of natural phenomena. This evidence is consistent with theories that ground the origin of supernatural belief in a human tendency to perceive intent and agency in nature.

No abstract

No abstract