The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables.

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 ( N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic ( r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multinational data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution-individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar results were found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, and collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-neglible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic.

Atheism and agnosticism are becoming increasingly popular, yet the neural processes underpinning individual differences in religious belief and non-belief remain poorly understood. In the current study, we examined differences between Believers and Non-Believers with regard to fundamental neural resting networks using EEG microstate analysis. Results demonstrated that Non-Believers show increased contribution from a resting-state network associated with deliberative or analytic processing (Microstate D), and Believers show increased contribution from a network associated with intuitive or automatic processing (Microstate C). Further, analysis of resting-state network communication suggested that Non-Believers may process visual information in a more deliberative or top-down manner, and Believers may process visual information in a more intuitive or bottom-up manner. These results support dual process explanations of individual differences in religious belief and add to the representation of non-belief as more than merely a lack of belief.

Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that the awareness of our eventual death is at odds with our evolved desire to live and that humans attempt to resolve this psychological conflict by investing in cultural worldviews that grant symbolic or literal immortality. The present studies examine the interplay between symbolic and literal immortality striving. Three studies show that, following a death reminder, only individuals who did not have a route to literal immortality (belief in an afterlife) increased how long they believe their culture (Canada in Studies 1 and 2, the United States in Study 3), will last by thousands of years. Study 4 demonstrated that this moderation effect cannot be explained by general religiosity; Study 5 conceptually replicated this finding using a different measure of perceived cultural longevity. Finally, Study 6 demonstrates that for those who were highly invested in their nation but did not believe in an afterlife, perceived cultural longevity was associated with decreased death anxiety. These results are consistent with the notion that people possess a primary path to immortality that follows directly from their worldview. The need for increased specificity in study design in TMT and the threat and defense literature more broadly is discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Economic threat has far-reaching emotional and social consequences, yet the impact of economic threat on neurocognitive processes has received little empirical scrutiny. Here, we examined the causal relationship between economic threat and conflict detection, a critical process in cognitive control associated with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Participants (N = 103) were first randomly assigned to read about a gloomy economic forecast (Economic Threat condition) or a stable economic forecast (No-Threat Control condition). Notably, these forecasts were based on real, publicly available economic predictions. Participants then completed a passive auditory oddball task composed of frequent standard tones and infrequent, aversive white-noise bursts, a task that elicits the N2, an event-related potential component linked to conflict detection. Results revealed that participants in the Economic Threat condition evidenced increased activation source localized to the ACC during the N2 to white-noise stimuli. Further, ACC activation to conflict mediated an effect of Economic Threat on increased justification for personal wealth. Economic threat thus has implications for basic neurocognitive function. Discussion centers on how effects on conflict detection could shed light on the broader emotional and social consequences of economic threat.