Supplementary information files for "Changes in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries"
Supplementary information files for article "Changes in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries"
The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, using survey data from 30,431 respondents in 43 countries recorded before and in the early stages following the emergence of COVID-19. Using variation in disease intensity, we shed light on the mechanisms predicting changes in social norm measures. We find evidence that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased while tightness and punishing frequency slightly decreased but observe no evidence for a robust change in most other norms. Thus, at least in the short term, our findings suggest that cultures are largely stable to pandemic threats except in those norms, hand washing in this case, that are perceived to be directly relevant to dealing with the collective threat.
© The Author(s) CC BY 4.0
Funding
Knut and Wallenberg Grant “How do human norms form and change?” 2016.0167. (G.An.)
The Swedish Research Council grant “Norms & Risk: Do social norms help dealing with collective threats” 2021-06271 (G.An.)
Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca, PRIN 2017, prot. 20178TRM3F (D.B.)
Universidad de Los Andes, Fondo Vicerrectoría de Investigaciones (J.-C.C.)
Ministry of Innovation and Technology of Hungary, National Research, Development and Innovation Fund NKFIH-OTKA K135963 (M.F.)
Grant 23-061770 S of the Czech Science Foundation (M.H. and S.G.)
RVO: 68081740 of the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences (M.H. and S.G.)
RA Science Committee, research project N.20TTSH-070 (A.Gr. and N.Khac.)
Open University of Israel, 511687 (R.N.). HSE University Basic Research Program (E.O.)
Project BASIC (PID2022-141802NB-I00) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe” (A.Sá.)
US Army Research Office Grant W911NF-19-1-910281 (B.S.)
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, 019.183SG.001 (E.S.)
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, VI.Veni.201 G.013 (E.S.)
European Commission, Horizon 2020-ID 870827 (E.S.)
Secret Power: Investigating the Legitimization of Criminal Governance: Group Comparisons and Within-Individual Dynamics
UK Research and Innovation
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School
- Loughborough Business School
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