Coronavirus-Related Searches on the Internet Predict COVID-19 Vaccination Rates in the Real World: A Behavioral Immune System Perspective

Beyond the surface: accounting for confounders in understanding the link between collectivism and COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

According to the parasite-stress theory, collectivism serves as a trait of ingroup assortative sociality, providing defense against infectious diseases. This study investigated the association between cultural collectivism and COVID-19 severity at the state (Study 1: N = 51), county (Study 2: N = 3,133), and daily (Study 3: N = 52,806) levels from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2022. State-level collectivism was assessed using two distinct measures: the U.S. collectivism index, focusing on social interconnectedness and interdependence, and the subjective-culture individualism-collectivism index (reversed), capturing attitudes and beliefs related to religion, abortion, and same-sex marriage. By employing random-intercept multilevel models, the results demonstrated significant and negative effects of state-level collectivism, as measured by the U.S collectivism index, on COVID-19 cases per million, COVID-19 deaths per million, and composite COVID-19 severity index, after controlling for confounding factors, such as socioeconomic development, ecological threats, disease protective behaviors, cultural norms, and political influences. A mini meta-analysis (Study 4: N = 9) confirmed the significance of these effects across studies. These findings supported the proactive role of collectivism in defending against the novel coronavirus in the United States, aligning with the parasite-stress theory of sociality. However, the subjective-culture individualism-collectivism index (reversed) did not exhibit a significant relationship with COVID-19 severity when confounding factors were considered. The high correlation between the subjective-culture individualism-collectivism index (reversed) and the controlled variables suggested shared variance that could diminish its impact on COVID-19 outcomes. Accordingly, the present findings underscore the significance of accounting for confounding factors when examining the association between collectivism and COVID-19 severity at population level. By considering relevant confounding factors, researchers could gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex interplay between cultural collectivism and its influence on COVID-19 severity. Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of how cultural collectivism shapes the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, emphasizing the importance of adjusting for confounding effects in population level studies.

Heightened religiosity proactively and reactively responds to the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe: Novel insights from the parasite-stress theory of sociality and the behavioral immune system theory

According to the parasite-stress theory of sociality and the behavioral immune system theory, heightened religiosity serves an anti-pathogen function by promoting in-group assortative sociality. Thus, highly religious countries/territories could have better control of the COVID-19 (proactively avoids disease-threat), and heightened COVID-19 threat could increase religiosity (reactively responds to disease-threat). As expected, country-level religiosity (religion-related online searches (Allah, Buddhism, Jesus, etc.) and number of total religions/ethnoreligions) negatively and significantly predicted COVID-19 severity (a composite index of COVID-19 susceptibility, reproductive rate, morbidity, and mortality rates) (Study 1a), after accounting for covariates (e.g., socioeconomic factors, ecological factors, collectivism index, cultural tightness-looseness index, COVID-19 policy response, test-to-case ratio). Moreover, multilevel analysis accounting for daily- (e.g., time-trend effect, season) and macro-level (same as in Study 1a) covariates showed that country-level religious searches, compared with the number of total religions/ethnoreligions, were more robust in negatively and significantly predicting daily-level COVID-19 severity during early pandemic stages (Study 1b). At weekly level, perceived coronavirus threat measured with coronavirus-related searches (corona, covid, covid-19, etc.), compared with actual COVID-19 threat measured with epidemiological data, showed larger effects in positively predicting religious searches (Study 2), after accounting for weekly- (e.g., autocorrelation, time-trend effect, season, religious holidays, major-illness-related searches) and macro-level (e.g., Christian-majority country/territory and all country-level variables in Study 1) covariates. Accordingly, heightened religiosity could proactively and reactively respond to the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe.