“The Tragedy of the Commons”: How Individualism and Collectivism Affected the Spread of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Why did COVID-19 hit some countries harder than others? While this question is usually answered based on demographics (e. g., population age), health policy (e.g., quarantine), or economic factors, we argue that cultural variance across countries is just as crucial in understanding how susceptible a society is to the COVID-19 outbreak. To test this hypothesis, we first analyzed data collected across 69 countries and examined the relationship between culture and the impact of COVID. Next, we conducted two studies to validate our findings further and explore the mechanism at hand. As expected, we found that the more individualistic (vs. collectivistic) a country was, the more COVID-19 cases and mortalities it had. We also found that the more individualistic participants were, the higher the chances they would not adhere to epidemic prevention measures. These findings are important in understanding the spread of the pandemic, devising optimal exit strategies from lockdowns, and persuading the population to get the new vaccine against the virus.

Explaining Variation in Parents' and Their Children's Stress During COVID-19 Lockdowns

“…We further assumed higher stress levels among parents scoring high on self-enhancement as they should have been more likely to perceive the lockdown as an impediment of their autonomy (Bavel et al, 2020 ). In line with this assumption, recent work found a variation in individualism, both within and across societies, being associated with the adherence to pandemic prevention measures (Maaravi et al, 2021 ). Societies emphasizing individualism over collectivism were more likely to oppose such measures, which may account for increased case rates and more stress experience during a pandemic (see also Kim et al, 2016 , on the role of individualism in the response of people to the Ebola epidemic).…”

“…Finally, we added Hofstede's individualism score of national culture from Hofstede's national culture survey (Hofstede, 2021 ) as a proxy for eventual differences in the stress levels of families across countries. We did so to better account for cross-country differences in meaningful psychological properties and the following previous work relating individualism to the spread of COVID-19 and other pandemic situations (Maaravi et al, 2021 ).…”

Impact of Societal Culture on Covid-19 Morbidity and Mortality across Countries

“…In a country-specific study, Huang (2020) find that collectivism and fear of Covid-19 together perhaps drive people's preventive intentions in China. Other studies too have highlighted the seemingly deleterious role of individualism within US (Bazzi et al, 2021) as well as across countries (Maaravi et al, 2021;Webster et al, 2021). Some other studies are more finegrained and yield specific cultural dimensions based on Hofstede's taxonomy.…”

Vaccine for yourself, your community, or your country? Examining audiences’ response to distance framing of COVID-19 vaccine messages

“…Criticisms around such a "deficit model" [5] suggest that communicators need to seek message strategies to enhance the persuasiveness of the message beyond providing information. Meanwhile, the heated debate over political issues and other social issues have brought the discussion on individualism, communitarianism, and patriotism to conversations such as vaccine acceptance [6] . The question then becomes, how do individuals perceive the pro-COVID-19 vaccine messages which emphasize "vaccinating for yourself", "vaccinating for your community", and "vaccinating for your country" differently.…”