Since its onset in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred worldwide concerns about safety and well-being, evoking a global consensus that protective measures are required to curb the further spread of the virus. Despite such consensus, the degree of stringency in their compliance and implementation largely differed across nations. An illustrative example was the primary author’s (a Turkish-German scholar) impression that people in Turkey behaved more strictly when it came to complying with hygienic and restrictive measures than those in Germany. In the height of the pandemic, it was almost impossible to observe anyone in Turkey who was not face-masked –neither in public nor in closed places; and small children were no exception to this personal observation. On the other end of the continent, the streets of Germany were buzzing with people who were walking freely and were barely face-masked. This raised curiosity on the origins of the perceived differences.

Are Turkish people just more empathetic than the Germans? Possibly not, as this would be an overly simplistic explanation that does not account for the complex dynamics involved in one’s decision to (deflect) cooperation. Cooperation, as in the case of complying with the COVID-19 measures, is not a zero-sum behavior. It helps others and the society as a whole, but also benefits the ones who cooperate. Therefore, the ones who comply with the protective measures may do so in order to protect vulnerable others (other-oriented empathic concerns), protect themselves (self-oriented concern), or both. So, it could be that the protective behaviors of Turkish citizens were motivated by a more pronounced fear of becoming infected, rather than an empathic concern of infecting others. But what determines whether individuals’ health compliance would be more or less motivated by empathic care for others or concern for one’s own health? 

We tried to tackle this question by taking the overall socio-political context wherein individuals are embedded into account. We argued that trust in one’s government might play a pivotal role, altering the strength by which other- and self-oriented motives become more or less influential on people’s decision to cooperate or not. National contexts where trust in the government is (perceived as) high are likely to be seen as more safe, reliable and predictable. We hypothesized that such “safe” environments would facilitate empathy-driven compliance with COVID-19 measures. On the contrary, in national contexts where the (perceived) trust in the government is quite low, it seems plausible that people would feel less safe and more vulnerable. Accordingly, we hypothesized that fear of COVID-19 would serve as a more compelling motivator for compliance in low trust contexts.

We set up a collaborative multinational research network aiming to shed light on the intricate interplay of these motivational factors with the socio-political context. Self-reported data were collected from 12,758 adult individuals across 34 countries. We tested our hypotheses both by utilizing individual-level scores of trust in the government (reflecting personal perception), and by using country-level scores of trust in the government extracted from the World Values Survey (reflecting the general perception of governmental trust within a nation). Results from this large cross-national study were recently published in Communications Psychology.

We found that the compliance with COVID-19 measures was indeed more strongly associated with empathic concern among individuals who perceived their governments as more (compared to less) trustworthy. At the country-level, however, this association was not moderated by trust in the government. This means that the association between empathy and compliance was equally strong across the different nations, regardless of the general level of trust in that context. Fear of COVID-19, on the other hand, was significantly associated with the support for containment measures, particularly among individuals who personally reported lower (compared to higher) levels of trust in their governments, as well as among individuals who lived in communities that are generally characterized by lower (compared to higher) trust in government institutions.

While our findings align with previous research that highlights the role of empathy, fear and trust in the government in motivating collective prosocial action, they also go beyond previous research by theoretically outlining and empirically testing their dynamic interplay in the context of large-scale cooperation. By acknowledging the limitations of the present research that emerges from its correlational nature (which prohibits any causal interpretations), reliance on self-reported data (which raises concerns about response biases), and use of the convenience sampling method (which limits the generalizability of the results), we tentatively came up with the following conclusions:

• Fear-driven cooperation is most impactful in contexts that are (perceived as)  less trustable. There is nothing more reasonable than being driven by self-protection concerns under conditions that signal insecurity.
• Yet, we do not recommend using fear as a strategy to boost cooperation in low trust contexts, due to the potential negative implications of heightened fear on mental health.

• Empathy-driven cooperation is a key and universal driver of large-scale cooperation across various contexts that seems to unfold best when individuals perceive their governments as more trustable.
• Hence, promoting empathy emerges as a promising and healthy strategy to bolster policy efficacy during crises, contingent upon actions that enhance individuals' trust in their government.

Our results also seems to align with the findings by Kidd and colleagues (2013) who revisited the classical Marshmallow task of Mischel et al. (1989). They tested how the reliability of the context alters children’s choice for either a smaller but immediate gratification (“one Marshmallow now”), over a more attractive but delayed gratification (“two Marshmallows if you wait”). Children in the unreliable condition were more likely to prioritize the foreseeable short-term gain, over the more tentative long-term gain, because the unreliable context made them doubt whether their efforts would truly result in the more attractive outcome. Similar mechanisms may also operate in our study when people actually were asked to cooperate either to attain a more concrete and short-term goal (i.e., protecting the self from infection) or to attain a more abstract and long-term goal (i.e., protecting other vulnerable individuals and the society as a whole). Just like the children, the adults also seem to make rational choices that are strongly influenced by how reliable they experience their context.

References:

Karakulak, A., Tepe, B., Dimitrova, R. et al. Trust in government moderates the association between fear of COVID-19 as well as empathic concern and preventive behaviour. Commun Psychol 1, 43 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00046-5

Kidd, C., Palmeri, H., & Aslin, R. N. (2013). Rational snacking: Young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition, 126(1), 109-114. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.08.004 

Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933-938. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1704494 

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