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Category: Project

Description: With the appearance of COVID-19 in the beginning of 2020, individuals around the globe were required to change some of their behaviors to stop the spread of the virus, the exhaustion of the health system and protect especially high risk groups ( i.e. people who are more likely to die from the disease) from getting infected. The recommended behaviors according to WHO (2020) are washing hands, keeping physical distance of 1 metre (3 feet), canceling/avoiding social gatherings, avoiding touching face, covering coughs, social distancing/staying home and seeking medical attention when feeling sick (WHO, 2020). Specifically, for some of these behaviors, e.g. staying home, the individual has to subordinate their own needs for the needs of the community. Many governments and the media advertised these behaviors with “showing solidarity” which includes cooperating for the greater good. Since experimental research showed that people of collectivistic countries are more willing to act for the greater good/cooperate (e.g. Parks & Vu, 1994; Wade-Benzoni, 2002), individuals in collectivistic countries should show more compliance to the COVID-19 behavior guidelines. Additional, some characteristics of collectivistic countries like conformity (Bond & Smith, 1996) might foster the adherence to the new behaviors. The following research project will take a deeper look at the differences between individualistic and collectivistic countries regarding compliance to the new COVID-19 behaviors. If possible, we will use control variables derived from previous literature, e.g. trust in government, GDP, punishment for non-compliance to get a clearer picture of the unique role that culture plays in defeating a pandemic.