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.

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In recent years social psychologists have displayed a growing interest in examining morality -what people consider right and wrong. The majority of work in this area has addressed this either in terms of individual-level processes (relating to moral decision making or interpersonal impression formation) or as a way to explain intergroup relations (perceived fairness of status differences, responses to group-level moral transgressions). We complement this work by examining how moral standards and moral judgements play a role in the regulation of individual behaviour within groups and social systems. In doing this we take into account processes of social identification and self-categorization, as these help understand how adherence to moral standards may be functional as a way to improve grouplevel conceptions of self. We review a recent research program in which we have investigated the importance of morality for group-based identities and intra-group behavioural regulation. This reveals convergent evidence of the centrality of moral judgments for people's conceptions of the groups they belong to, and demonstrates the importance of group-specific moral norms in identifying behaviours that contribute to their identity as group members.Morality and Groups 3

Three studies examined strategies of status improvement in experimentally created (Study 1 and 2) and pre-existing (Study 3) low-status groups. Theory and prior research suggested that an in-group norm that established a particular strategy of status improvement as moral (rather than competent) would have a greater effect on individuals' decision to work at this strategy. Both Study 1 and 2 found that morality norms had a greater impact than competence norms on individuals' decision to work at group (rather than individual) status improvement. In both Study 1 and 2 participants also needed less time to decide on a strategy of status improvement when it is was encouraged by a morality norm rather than a competence norm. Study 3 used a pre-existing low status group (i.e., Southern Italians) to further confirm that morality norms have a greater effect on the decision to work at a group status improvement than do competence norms. Results are discussed in terms of social influence and identity management strategies.Morality, competence, and status improvement 3Is it better to be moral than smart? The effects of morality and competence norms on the decision to work at group status improvement As members of groups, people are faced with the dilemma of working to improve their individual status or working to improve the status of their group as a whole. This dilemma is particularly salient for members of low-status groups who are more concerned about improving their status than are members of high-status groups (Branscombe &

This research examines how moral values regulate the behavior of individual group members. It argues that group members behave in line with moral group norms because they anticipate receiving ingroup respect when enacting moral values that are shared by ingroup members. Data from two experimental studies offer evidence in support. In Study 1 ( N = 82), morality-based (but not competence-based) ingroup norms determined whether members of a low-status group opted for individual versus collective strategies for status improvement. This effect was mediated by anticipated ingroup respect and emerged regardless of whether group norms prescribed collectivistic or individualistic behavior. These effects were replicated in Study 2 ( N = 69), where no comparable effect was found as a result of moral norms communicated by a higher status outgroup. This indicates that social identity implications rather than interdependence or more generic concerns about social approval or importance of cooperation drive these effects.

Negotiators often fail to reach integrative ("win-win") agreements because they think that their own and other's preferences are diametrically opposed-the so-called fixed-pie perception. We examined how verbal (Experiment 1) and nonverbal (Experiment 2) emotional expressions may reduce fixed-pie perception and promote integrative behavior. In a two-issue computer-simulated negotiation, participants negotiated with a counterpart emitting one of the following emotional response patterns: (1) anger on both issues, (2) anger on participant's high priority issue and happiness on participant's low-priority issue, (3) happiness on high priority issue and anger on low-priority issue, or (4) happiness on both issues. In both studies, the third pattern reduced fixed-pie perception and increased integrative behavior, whereas the second pattern amplified bias and reduced integrative behavior. Implications for how emotions shape social exchange are discussed.

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In this paper, we analyzed the relationships among political identity, the perception of moral distance between the political ingroup and the political outgroup, and outgroup animalistic dehumanization. One correlational and one experimental study revealed a positive correlation of ingroup identification (Study 1, N = 99) and salience of ingroup membership (Study 2, N = 96) with the degree to which participants dehumanized the outgroup. This relationship was mediated by the perceived moral distance between the ingroup and the outgroup. The limitations, implications, and possible developments derived from the present findings are discussed.