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Trust predicts COVID-19 prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions in 23 countries

Pagliaro S 1 , Sacchi S 2 , Pacilli MG 3 , Brambilla M 2 , Lionetti F 1 , Bettache K 4 Show all authors , Bianchi M 5 , Biella M 6 , Bonnot V 7 , Boza M 8 , Butera F 9 , Ceylan-Batur S 10 , Chong K 4 , Chopova T 11 , Crimston CR 12 , Álvarez B 12 , Cuadrado I 13 , Ellemers N 11 , Formanowicz M 14 , Graupmann V 15 , Gkinopoulos T 16 , Kyung Jeong EH 17 , Jasinskaja-Lahti I 18 , Jetten J 12 , Muhib Bin K 17 , Mao Y 19 , McCoy C 12 , Mehnaz F 17 , Minescu A 17 , Sirlopú D 20 , Simić A 2 , Travaglino G 21 , Uskul AK 22 , Zanetti C 9 , Zinn A 23 , Zubieta E 24

Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Science, University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
  • 2 Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
  • 3 Department of Political Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy
  • 4 Department of Psychology, Monash University, Clayton, Malaysia
  • 5 Digital Human-Environment Interaction Lab, Universidade Lusòfona, Lisbon, Portugal
  • 6 Department of Psychology, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
  • 7 Department of Psychology, Université de Paris, Paris, France
  • 8 Department of Psychology and Education Sciences, University Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iasi, Romania
  • 9 Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 10 Department of Psychology, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey
  • 11 Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
  • 12 School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
  • 13 Department of Psychology, University of Almería, Almeria, Spain
  • 14 University Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh, Poland
  • 15 Department of Psychology, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
  • 16 Faculty of Education, Greenwich University, London, United Kingdom
  • 17 Department of Psychology, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
  • 18 Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
  • 19 Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China
  • 20 School of Humanities and Social Science, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile
  • 21 The Chinese University of Honk Kong, Honk Kong, China
  • 22 School of Psychology, University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom
  • 23 Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, England, United Kingdom
  • 24 Faculty of Psychology, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
PLoS One, 2021;16(3):e0248334.
PMID: 33690672 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248334

Abstract

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals' well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one's own health. Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large. This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals' willingness to engage in prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals' behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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