Prosociality and health: Identification with all humanity is a replicable predictor of prosocial motivation for health behaviors

Abstract

The acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic may have passed, but the pandemic remains a major worldwide health concern that demands continued vigilance. Are there individual differences that predict the motivation to continue to wear masks and to create physical distance in public? Previous research conducted early in the pandemic had suggested that a particular social identity—identification with all humanity—is one underlying factor that contributes to people’s cooperation with health behavior guidelines. This highlights that the pandemic is not only an issue to be tackled with the tools of immunology and epidemiology. It also requires the tools from psychology—to measure the representations people have about themselves and others and how these representations drive values and decisions related to health. Here we report work on U.S. respondents that examined whether individuals’ level of identification with all humanity predicts their prosocial health behaviors aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. In 3 convergent studies (total N = 1,580), we find that identification with all humanity predicted the prosocial motivation to wear masks and to engage in physical distancing when in public without a mask. The results were obtained while controlling for a host of covariates, including demographics, educational attainment, and Big Five personality dimensions. We find that some people have a marked drive to care for the health of strangers, which is significantly linked to their concern for all humanity rather than being restricted to their care for their community or country. Discussion focuses on this social identification with humanity and its enduring, replicable role in predicting the motivation to engage in prosocial health behaviors. We note key implications for theories in social and developmental psychology as well as for research that may lead to practical applications for lessening the human toll of the current and future pandemics.

Pandemics past: Collective memories for a global community?

“…The study also replicated previous findings (e.g., Barragan et al, 2021 Barragan & Meltzoff, 2023; Wang et al, 2023) about the predictive power of IWAH on compliance with COVID-19 health guidelines, and other research on the relationship between global identification and global cooperation (e.g., Buchan et al, 2011) with a measure specifically about pandemic preparedness.…”

“…The study also replicated previous findings (e.g., Barragan et al, 2021Barragan & Meltzoff, 2023Wang et al, 2023) about the predictive power…”

“…Research conducted in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that social identities do predict people’s likelihood to comply with health guidelines (for positive effects of national identification on compliance with distancing or limiting travel, see e.g., Chan et al, 2021; van Bavel et al, 2022). More relevant to the present studies, IWAH was found to predict compliance with health-protective behaviors (e.g., handwashing, distancing; Barragan & Meltzoff, 2023; Barragan et al, 2021; Sparkman, 2022) and intentions to vaccinate (Marchlewska et al, 2022) above and beyond the effects of community and national identifications and demographic variables such as social class, age, and educational level. Further, Wang et al (2023) found that the COVID-19 pandemic, as a global crisis, increased the power of global citizen identification to predict prosocial intentions and behavior.…”

Introduction to the special issue on strengths-based examinations of Latinx youths’ interpersonal relationships and socioemotional well-being

“…Work that moves beyond thinking about families from a dyadic perspective to capturing triadic, family, and multilevel (e.g., individual × family effects) shared assets and experiences is warranted. Further work focusing on other kin relationships such as grandparents (Cortes Barragan et al, 2023; Gonzalez & Barnett, 2023), godparents, and fictive kin, and integrating more diverse definitions of families is critical. Second, all the studies focused on family relationships in the context of cisgender, heterosexual families.…”

Factors motivating lebanese youth to adopt COVID-19 good practices: a cross-sectional study

“…The concept of health worries matters and extends beyond one's health. A study conducted by Barragan and Meltzoff revealed that certain people have a strong desire to look out for the health of strangers, which is strongly correlated with their concern for all of humanity rather than just their own community or nation ( 58 ). Our data also supported H5 and indicated that individuals with higher health worries are more likely to follow COVID-19 good practices.…”