Cooperation and acting for the greater good during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Cooperation is essential to overcome global pandemics and other health crises, as many preventative measures require people to bear a personal cost to benefit other people or society as a whole. Wearing a face mask, for example, protects other people more than it protects oneself. In this essay, we discuss several mechanisms that are known to promote cooperation in economic games and real-world scenarios, with a special focus on message-based interventions that might be helpful to promote social distancing, mask wearing, physical hygiene, vaccine uptake, and information seeking. Lessons learned and future research ideas are offered.

The Theory of Planned Behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparison of health behaviors between Belgian and French residents

“…The influences from the TPB dimensions in COVID-19 context advocate attitudes, social norms, perceived control and intentions as viable determinants of such health behaviors [ 44 , 45 ]. Although that the current study reinforces TPB, the percentage of variance explained for both targeted behaviors remained low (i.e., around 10%), suggesting that potential additional dimensions such as cooperation [ 46 ], emotions [ 25 ], resilience [ 47 ], and self-compassion [ 48 ] should be considered in order to improve the behavior prediction.…”

Invincibility threatens vaccination intentions during a pandemic

“…However, in less collectivistic cultures, which value personal freedoms and autonomy, perceived invincibility may threaten community efforts to suppress a pandemic. Prior commentary has alluded to this relationship, noting that perceived invincibility in developed countries, such as the U.S., is a potential threat to achieving the collective preventative behavior necessary to suppress COVID-19 [ 5 , 29 ]. The present research provides initial empirical evidence of this relationship at global scale.…”

“…To eradicate a pandemic such as COVID-19, prosocial beliefs and behaviors are needed on the behalf of all community members, despite feelings of personal invincibility [ 3 , 5 , 6 , 32 ]. To suppress COVID-19, individuals need to be concerned about the spread of the disease in their community, which should encourage preventative behaviors to lessen its spread, e.g., handwashing, social distancing, and mask wearing [ 1 , 2 , 33 ].…”

“…Inoculated individuals are at a much lower risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19, and they are much less likely to spread the disease to others [ 1 , 4 ]. However, there are also personal costs associated with vaccination [ 35 , 36 ], which could increase vaccination hesitancy in the absence of prosocial concern about reducing disease transmission [ 5 , 32 , 37 ]. Recent research suggests that vaccination is a moral obligation or social contract, such that to suppress a disease through inoculation, prosocial motivation is essential in addition to self-interested factors [ 5 , 32 ].…”

“…However, there are also personal costs associated with vaccination [ 35 , 36 ], which could increase vaccination hesitancy in the absence of prosocial concern about reducing disease transmission [ 5 , 32 , 37 ]. Recent research suggests that vaccination is a moral obligation or social contract, such that to suppress a disease through inoculation, prosocial motivation is essential in addition to self-interested factors [ 5 , 32 ]. In the U.S., prosocial concern about infecting others was positively associated with influenza vaccinations [ 6 ]; and in Israel, prosocial, rather than self-interested, motives contributed to polio vaccine (OPV) uptake [ 37 ].…”