The Adelson School of Entrepreneurship, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel.
Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.
Front Public Health. 2021 Feb 11;9:627559. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.627559. eCollection 2021.
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.
为什么 COVID-19 在某些国家比其他国家更严重？虽然这个问题通常是根据人口统计学（例如，人口年龄）、卫生政策（例如，隔离）或经济因素来回答的，但我们认为，国家之间的文化差异在理解一个社会对 COVID-19 爆发的易感性方面同样至关重要。为了检验这一假设，我们首先分析了在 69 个国家收集的数据，并研究了文化与 COVID 影响之间的关系。接下来，我们进行了两项研究，以进一步验证我们的发现并探讨当前的机制。正如预期的那样，我们发现一个国家越个人主义（相对于集体主义），它的 COVID-19 病例和死亡率就越高。我们还发现，参与者越个人主义，他们不遵守防疫措施的可能性就越高。这些发现对于理解大流行的传播、制定从封锁中最佳退出策略以及说服民众接种新的病毒疫苗都很重要。
