How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect cooperation and interdependence?

Abstract

Do crises bring people together or pull them apart? Here we examine how people’s willingness to help others and their perceived interdependence with others changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and assess what factors are associated with any change. We collected data at 4 time points from the same cohort of 497 paid participants, starting on March 6th, before the pandemic was declared, through April 2. We found that perceived interdependence with neighbors and with humanity increased over time on multiple measures. However, regarding cooperation, agreement with the statement that helping someone in need “is the right thing to do” decreased over time (towards both a neighbor and a citizen of another country). Although the changes per time period were small for some of these effects, cumulatively they were non-trivial (ranging from a .33 to a .75 change on a 7 point likert scale). There was no change over time in participants' reported willingness to help somebody in their neighborhood (cooperation) or their feelings that when “All of humanity succeeds” they feel good (interdependence). We found reliable associations of change in cooperation and interdependence with sex, age, and pre-existing medical condition. We are collecting data on an ongoing basis which will allow us to investigate how these variables continue to change or not as the pandemic unfolds.

Acute anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with higher levels of everyday altruism

“…It is possible that individuals perceived the COVID-19 situation to become substantially more severe prior to the first data collection on March 24 th (of note, by then the WHO had already officially declared the outbreak a global pandemic), and that perception became relatively stable over the following weeks. At this point, not enough longitudinal data collected during the pandemic has been made available through publications, but some unpublished data seem to suggest that more substantial changes in COVID-19 risk perception may have occurred prior to the beginning of our study (Ayers et al, 2020;Wise et al, 2020). Another possibility is that objective indices of COVID-19 threat, like number of cases and deaths, are not the only contributing factor for subjective threat perception.…”

The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights

“…In fact, there is no evidence, to our knowledge, for any overall increase in kindness, empathy, and compassion right now relative to nonpandemic times. One study, specifically designed to explore this issue, does find that people claim to experience more interdependence with neighbors and humanity now than in prepandemic times-but also finds that they are less likely to agree that helping someone in need "is the right thing to do" (57). Furthermore, at least in the United States-although less so in countries such as Canada-this pandemic is not bringing people together; rather, responses reflect the partisan divide that so characterizes recent times, with conservatives and liberals having different views about wearing masks, the wisdom of a continuing lockdown, and much else.…”

Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Make Consumers Shop Alone? The Role of Emotions and Interdependent Self-Construal

“…On the one hand, consumers show a tendency to isolate themselves while buying and using products [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. On the other hand, consumers may tend to stick together with other people, feeling community with them [15][16][17]. Therefore, we pose the question: what determines which of the above two reactions is dominant?…”