COVID‐19 shifts mortality salience, activities, and values in the United States: Big data analysis of online adaptation

Abstract

What is the effect of a life‐threatening pandemic at the societal level? An expanded Theory of Social Change, Cultural Evolution, and Human Development predicts that, during a period of increasing survival threat and decreasing prosperity, humans will shift toward the psychology and behavior typical of the small‐scale, collectivistic, and rural subsistence ecologies in which we evolved. In particular, subjective mortality salience, engagement in subsistence activities, and collectivism will all increase, while the aspiration to be wealthy will decrease. Because coronavirus has forced unprecedented proportions of human activity online, we tested hypotheses derived from the theory by analyzing big data samples for 70 days before and 70 days after the coronavirus pandemic stimulated President Trump to declare a national emergency. Google searches were used for an exploratory study; the exploratory study was followed by three independent replications on Twitter, internet forums, and blogs. Across all four internet platforms, terms related to subjective mortality salience, engagement in subsistence activities, and collectivism showed massive increases. These findings, coupled with prior research testing this theory, indicate that humans may have an evolutionarily conditioned response to the level of death and availability of material resources in society. More specifically, humans may shift their behavior and psychology toward that found in subsistence ecologies under conditions of high mortality and low prosperity or, conversely, toward behavior and psychology found in modern commercial ecologies under conditions of low mortality and high prosperity.

Shifts in ecology, behavior, values, and relationships during the coronavirus pandemic: Survival threat, subsistence activities, conservation of resources, and interdependent families

“…As one of our California respondents pointed out to us, our survey leaves out the coronavirus experience of essential workers and, in California, does not represent the ethnic diversity of the state. However, we have confidence in the generality of our findings because many have been replicated in a national study of social media ( Evers et al., 2021 ). That study indexed activities and values by means of word frequencies.…”

“…In 2020, we were living through a pandemic, with stay-at-home orders and radical life changes. Greenfield's Theory of Social Change, Cultural Evolution, and Human Development predicted that higher mortality rates, in concert with intensified household and neighborhood contact, plus reduced contact with acquaintances and strangers, would lead to predictable changes in many areas ( Greenfield, 2009 , 2016 ; Evers, Greenfield, & Evers, 2021 ). Specifically the theory predicted that survival concerns would augment and life would shift towards activities, values, relationships, and parenting expectations typical of self-contained small-scale rural subsistence environments with low life expectancy.…”

“…However, these responses in the United States took place in a high-tech environment, not the low-tech environment of a subsistence village. As we have documented in another publication ( Evers et al., 2021 ), even the augmentation of subsistence activities during the pandemic was reliant on being able to gain materials and information for vegetable gardening, cooking, and home repair on the Internet. This major environmental difference makes it all the more interesting that these basic human responses to survival threat and limited contact with strangers have been conserved throughout human history and cultural evolution.…”

“…In general, environments with lower mortality rates reduce the emphasis on mortality in community practices. For example, in the United States preCOVID, focus on a dead body was often minimized through cremation rather than burial, and memorial services, which, by definition, do not include the body, are often structured as celebrations of life rather than opportunities to grieve over death ( Evers et al., 2021 ).…”

“…The term mortality salience was introduced as a central component of Terror Management Theory ( Greenberg et al., 1992 ). In a prior publication on the effects of COVID-19 on online behavior, we used the term “mortality salience” to describe increases in the online frequency of terms such as “death” and “cemetery” after Trump's COVID emergency declaration( Evers et al., 2021 ). Because of the nature of the items used in the survey reported here (e.g., “I am thinking about making plans for when I die”), we use the term “survival concerns” and see survival concerns as a subset of the more general concept, “mortality salience.” In our Discussion, Section 4.1.1 , we compare and contrast our approach with that of Greenberg and colleagues.…”