TY - JOUR
T1 - Shared fate was associated with sustained cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic
AU - Beltran, Diego Guevara
AU - Ayers, Jessica D.
AU - Claessens, Scott
AU - Alcock, Joe
AU - Baciu, Cristina
AU - Cronk, Lee
AU - Hudson, Nicole M.
AU - Hurmuz-Sklias, Hector
AU - Miller, Geoffrey
AU - Tidball, Keith
AU - Van Horn, Andrew
AU - Winfrey, Pamela
AU - Zarka, Emily
AU - Todd, Peter M.
AU - Aktipis, Athena
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Guevara Beltran et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2024/9
Y1 - 2024/9
N2 - Did the COVID-19 pandemic bring people together or push them apart? While infectious diseases tend to push people apart, crises can also bring people together through positive interdependence. We studied this question by asking an international sample (N = 1,006) about their inclinations to cooperate, perceptions of interdependence (i.e., shared fate), and perceived risk as well as local prevalence of COVID-19 infection across 14 time points from March to August, 2020. While perceived interdependence with others tended to increase during this time period, inclinations to cooperate decreased over time. At the within-person level, higher local prevalence of COVID-19 attenuated increases in perceived interdependence with others, and was associated with lower inclinations to cooperate. At the between-person level, people with high perceived interdependence with others reported more stable, or increasing, inclinations to cooperate over time than people with low perceived interdependence. Establishing a high sense of perceived interdependence with others may thus allow people to maintain cooperation during crises, even in the face of challenging circumstances such as those posed by a highly transmissible virus.
AB - Did the COVID-19 pandemic bring people together or push them apart? While infectious diseases tend to push people apart, crises can also bring people together through positive interdependence. We studied this question by asking an international sample (N = 1,006) about their inclinations to cooperate, perceptions of interdependence (i.e., shared fate), and perceived risk as well as local prevalence of COVID-19 infection across 14 time points from March to August, 2020. While perceived interdependence with others tended to increase during this time period, inclinations to cooperate decreased over time. At the within-person level, higher local prevalence of COVID-19 attenuated increases in perceived interdependence with others, and was associated with lower inclinations to cooperate. At the between-person level, people with high perceived interdependence with others reported more stable, or increasing, inclinations to cooperate over time than people with low perceived interdependence. Establishing a high sense of perceived interdependence with others may thus allow people to maintain cooperation during crises, even in the face of challenging circumstances such as those posed by a highly transmissible virus.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85204968110
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0307829
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0307829
M3 - Article
C2 - 39325844
AN - SCOPUS:85204968110
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 19
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 9
M1 - e0307829
ER -