Prosocial behavior in the time of COVID-19: The effect of private and public role models.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Abel M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9508698 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Prosocial behavior in the time of COVID-19: The effect of private and public role models.
Journal of behavioral and experimental economics 20220924
In public good provision and other collective action problems, people are uncertain about how to balance self-interest and prosociality. Actions of others may inform this decision. We conduct an experiment to test the effect of watching private citizens and public officials acting in ways that either increase or decrease the spread of the coronavirus. For private role models, positive examples lead to a 34% increase in donations to the CDC Emergency Fund and a 20% increase in learning about COVI ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:In two pre-registered and fully incentivized studies (N = 501), we investigate prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Based on a comparison with pre-pandemic data, Study 1 shows that individuals' general prosociality measured with a (context-independent) Social Value Orientation Slider changed significantly before vs. during the early stage of the pandemic towards increased prosociality. In addition, we identified pandemic-specific context factors for prosocial behavior measured by a series of Dictator games with different recipients. Allocations in the Dictator game increased with the giver's responsibility and the recipients' vulnerability to the virus. Study 2 replicates and extends this finding in a sample representative for the adult German population in terms of age and gender. We show that, for different actors (self, recipient, politicians), different dimensions of responsibility (responsibility to help, responsibility for the problem cause, and for the solution) are associated with prosocial behavior. Contrary to what could be expected from diffusion of responsibility, prosocial behavior increased not only when individuals themselves felt responsible to help but also when they perceived politicians to be responsible to help. Assigning responsibility for the cause of the COVID-19 crisis to recipients and politicians was associated with a decrease in prosocial behavior. However, responsibility for the solution had no influence. We discuss implications for public policies.
| S-EPMC8482435 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundGiven widespread vulnerability to COVID-19 infection in areas with low vaccination rates, facemask wearing is repeatedly emphasized for the general population including bank workers, who have contact with many customers each day. Over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, studies focused on facemask wearing among healthcare workers but not among bank workers, who are also at risk of COVID-19. To address this gap and to consider intervention measures that encourage the wearing of facemasks, this study was conducted to identify behaviors of facemask wearing and associated factors among bank workers in Dessie City, Ethiopia.Materials and methodsAn institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 413 bank workers who were selected using a simple random sampling technique from January 1st to 30th, 2021 in Dessie City, Ethiopia. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and on-the-spot observational checklist. The collected data were checked, coded and entered to EpiData version 4.6 and exported to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0 for data cleaning and analysis. Data were analyzed using bivariable (crude odds ratio [COR]) and multivariable (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]) logistic regression model at 95% confidence interval (CI). Variables from the bivariable analysis with a p-value <0.25 were considered for multivariable analysis. Then, variables that had a p-value <0.05 were declared as factors significantly associated with behavior of facemask wearing.Main findingsIn this study, the behavior of facemask wearing among bank workers was 50.4% [95%CI: 45.3-55.2%] with 21.1% always wearing a facemask, 72.4% sometimes, and 6.5% never. A majority of the bank workers 350 (84.7%) had good knowledge of COVID-19 and half of them 208 (50.4%) had a positive attitude towards taking precautions against COVID-19. Just over two-thirds of the respondents 284 (68.8%) preferred to wear a non-medical mask. Two hundred fifty-five (61.7%) said wearing a facemask interfered with communication and 259 (62.7%) felt that wearing a facemask was not comfortable. Facemask-wearing behavior was significantly associated with a high level of positive attitude towards taking precautions against COVID-19 (AOR = 3.27, 95% CI: 1.75-6.11), the perception that the consequences of getting COVID-19 could be serious (AOR = 4.87, 95% CI: 2.38-9.94), the presence of chronic illness (AOR = 2.19, 95% CI: 1.07-4.48), sex being female (AOR = 1.87, 95% CI: 1.06-3.32) and age being greater or equal to 35 years (AOR = 9.25, 95% CI: 4.79-17.88).ConclusionThe main finding of the study showed that the behavior of facemask wearing among bank workers was relatively low (50.4%) compared to other types of workers as found in other studies. To increase the behavior of facemask wearing among bank workers, health decision makers need to develop updated guidance for promotion of facemask wearing to increase the practical and appropriate use of facemasks among bank workers. Bank managers and concerned government bodies should enforce mask use to change behavior of these workers.
| S-EPMC8635365 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Uncertainty has been shown to reduce the willingness to cooperate in various social dilemmas and negatively affect prosocial behavior. However, some studies showed that uncertainty does not always decrease prosocial behavior, depending on the type of uncertainty. More specifically, recent research has shown that prosocial behavior tends to increase under impact uncertainty-uncertainty about the consequences for others if they become infected. In addition, researchers have argued that intuition favors prosocial behavior while deliberation leads to selfish behavior. Our study explored how intuitive (time pressure) or deliberate mental processing, under outcome, or impact uncertainty affect prosocial behavior in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our sample consists of 496 participants, and we used a 4 (COVID-19 scenario: Control vs. Impact Uncertainty vs. Worst-Case vs. Indirect Transmission) by 2 (decision time: time delay vs. time pressure) between-subjects design. Results suggest that participants are more inclined to stay at home (prosocial intention) when forced to make their decisions intuitively rather than deliberately. Additionally, we found that uncertainty does not always decrease prosocial behavior. It seems that uncertainty does not affect the prosocial intention in a scenario with a real infectious disease. These findings suggest that the distinction between outcome and impact uncertainty may be due to the realism of experimental stimuli interventions.
| S-EPMC8963555 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic presents threats, such as severe disease and economic hardship, to people of different ages. These threats can also be experienced asymmetrically across age groups, which could lead to generational differences in behavioral responses to reduce the spread of the disease. We report a survey conducted across 56 societies (N = 58,641), and tested pre-registered hypotheses about how age relates to (a) perceived personal costs during the pandemic, (b) prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), and (c) support for behavioral regulations (e.g., mandatory quarantine, vaccination). We further tested whether the relation between age and prosocial COVID-19 responses can be explained by perceived personal costs during the pandemic. Overall, we found that older people perceived more costs of contracting the virus, but less costs in daily life due to the pandemic. However, age displayed no clear, robust associations with prosocial COVID-19 responses and support for behavioral regulations. We discuss the implications of this work for understanding the potential intergenerational conflicts of interest that could occur during the COVID-19 pandemic.
| S-EPMC9045808 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Bat sarbecovirus BANAL-236 is highly related to SARS-CoV-2 and infects human cells, albeit lacking the furin cleavage site in its spike protein. BANAL-236 replicates efficiently and pauci-symptomatically in humanized mice and in macaques, where its tropism is enteric, strongly differing from that of SARS-CoV-2. BANAL-236 infection leads to protection against superinfection by a virulent strain. We find no evidence of antibodies recognizing bat sarbecoviruses in populations in close contact with bats in which the virus was identified, indicating that such spillover infections, if they occur, are rare. Six passages in humanized mice or in human intestinal cells, mimicking putative early spillover events, select adaptive mutations without appearance of a furin cleavage site and no change in virulence. Therefore, acquisition of a furin site in the spike protein is likely a pre-spillover event that did not occur upon replication of a SARS-CoV-2-like bat virus in humans or other animals. Other hypotheses regarding the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 should therefore be evaluated, including the presence of sarbecoviruses carrying a spike with a furin cleavage site in bats.
| S-SCDT-10_15252-EMBR_202256055 | biostudies-other
Project description:BackgroundSocial media platforms (SMPs) are frequently used by various pharmaceutical companies, public health agencies, and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) for communicating health concerns, new advancements, and potential outbreaks. Although the benefits of using them as a tool have been extensively discussed, the online activity of various health care organizations on SMPs during COVID-19 in terms of engagement and sentiment forecasting has not been thoroughly investigated.ObjectiveThe purpose of this research is to analyze the nature of information shared on Twitter, understand the public engagement generated on it, and forecast the sentiment score for various organizations.MethodsData were collected from the Twitter handles of 5 pharmaceutical companies, 10 US and Canadian public health agencies, and the World Health Organization (WHO) from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2021. A total of 181,469 tweets were divided into 2 phases for the analysis, before COVID-19 and during COVID-19, based on the confirmation of the first COVID-19 community transmission case in North America on February 26, 2020. We conducted content analysis to generate health-related topics using natural language processing (NLP)-based topic-modeling techniques, analyzed public engagement on Twitter, and performed sentiment forecasting using 16 univariate moving-average and machine learning (ML) models to understand the correlation between public opinion and tweet contents.ResultsWe utilized the topics modeled from the tweets authored by the health care organizations chosen for our analysis using nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF): cumass=-3.6530 and -3.7944 before and during COVID-19, respectively. The topics were chronic diseases, health research, community health care, medical trials, COVID-19, vaccination, nutrition and well-being, and mental health. In terms of user impact, WHO (user impact=4171.24) had the highest impact overall, followed by public health agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; user impact=2895.87), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH; user impact=891.06). Among pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer's user impact was the highest at 97.79. Furthermore, for sentiment forecasting, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous factors (SARIMAX) models performed best on the majority of the subsets of data (divided as per the health care organization and period), with the mean absolute error (MAE) between 0.027 and 0.084, the mean square error (MSE) between 0.001 and 0.011, and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) between 0.031 and 0.105.ConclusionsOur findings indicate that people engage more on topics such as COVID-19 than medical trials and customer experience. In addition, there are notable differences in the user engagement levels across organizations. Global organizations, such as WHO, show wide variations in engagement levels over time. The sentiment forecasting method discussed presents a way for organizations to structure their future content to ensure maximum user engagement.
| S-EPMC9390834 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Prosocial actions are a building block for developing mature and caring social relations. However, the global pandemic may hamper adolescents' prosocial actions. In this preregistered study, we examined the extent to which adolescents provided daily emotional support during the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, 10-25-year-old high school and university students participated at three timepoints (N = 888 at the first timepoint (May 2020); 494 at the second timepoint (Nov 2020) and 373 at the third timepoint (May 2021)). At the first and second timepoint, participants completed 2 weeks of daily diaries on providing emotional support. At all timepoints, participants performed Dictator Games to measure giving to peers, friends and COVID-19 targets (medical doctors, COVID-19 patients, individuals with a poor immune system). Across the three timepoints, adolescents gave more to COVID-19 targets than peers and friends, but giving to COVID-19 target was highest in the beginning of the pandemic (first timepoint relative to second and third timepoint). Results from the first timepoint showed that emotional support directed to friends peaked in mid-adolescence, whereas emotional support towards family members showed a gradual increase from childhood to young adulthood. Furthermore, daily emotional support increased between the first and second timepoint. Daily emotional support to friends predicted giving behavior to all targets, whereas emotional support to family was specifically associated with giving to COVID-19 targets. These findings elucidate the relation between daily actions and prosocial giving to societally-relevant targets in times of crisis, underlying the importance of prosocial experiences during adolescence.
| S-EPMC9075144 | biostudies-literature
Project description:As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic spread, meeting the testing needs to control the spread of infection became a major challenge worldwide. In Pakistan, the lack of the requisite infrastructure and training compounded the acute shortage of testing kits and other consumables. Against this backdrop and to urgently improve province-wide access to high-quality COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing with rapid turnaround times, the Government of the Sindh (GoS) province of Pakistan entered into a public-private partnership with Indus Hospital & Health Network (IHHN). Under this partnership, the GoS undertook sample collection and Indus Hospital in Karachi, Sindh, centralized testing. We describe the implementation strategies adopted by the partnership, as well as the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned. Notably, up to 40% and 22% of total COVID-19 PCRs done in Sindh in the first 2 months of the pandemic, respectively, were performed at Indus Hospital in Karachi, though this percentage declined gradually as other centers caught up with their testing capacities. The rapid scaling up was achieved through a combination of mechanisms and factors including building on preexisting partnerships between the GoS and IHHN, pooling resources and harnessing distinct and complementary roles, relocating existing resources, introducing automation and information technology system changes, establishing risk mitigation strategies, and introducing quality measures within testing processes. The primary outcome of the partnership was rapid province-wide access to quality COVID-19 PCR testing with short turnaround times and at no cost to the patient. Furthermore, implementation of the partnership goals established new mechanisms as well as strengthened existing ones to enable rapid response to the future global health security challenges in Sindh, Pakistan.
| S-EPMC8885349 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionIn Africa almost half of healthcare services are delivered through private sector providers. These are often underused in national public health responses. To support and accelerate the public sector's COVID-19 response, we facilitated recruitment of additional private sector capacity by initiating a public-private partnership (PPP) in Kisumu County, Kenya. In this manuscript we demonstrate this PPP's performance.MethodsCOVID-19 diagnostic testing formed the basis for a PPP between Kenyan Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Department of Health Kisumu County, PharmAccess Foundation, and local faith-based and private healthcare facilities: COVID-Dx. First phase COVID-Dx was implemented from June 01, 2020, to March 31, 2021 in Kisumu County, Kenya. Trained laboratory technologists in participating healthcare facilities collected nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal samples from patients meeting the Kenyan MoH COVID-19 case definition. Healthcare workers in participating facilities collected patient clinical data using a digitized MoH COVID-19 Case Identification Form. We shared aggregated results from these data via (semi-) live dashboards with all relevant stakeholders through their mobile phones and tablets. Statistical analyses were performed using Stata 16 to inform project processes.ResultsNine private facilities participated in the project. A patient trajectory was developed from case identification to result reporting, all steps supported by a semi-real time digital dashboard. A total of 4,324 PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 were added to the public response, identifying 425 positives, accounting for 16% of all COVID-19 tests performed in the County over the given time-period. Geo-mapped and time-tagged information on incident cases was depicted on Google maps through PowerBI-dashboards and fed back to policymakers for informed rapid decision making. Preferential COVID-19 testing was performed on health workers at risk, with 1,009 tests performed (up to 43% of all County health workforce).ConclusionWe demonstrate feasibility of rapidly increasing the public health sector COVID-19 response through coordinated private sector efforts in an African setting. Our PPP intervention in Kisumu, Kenya was based on a joint testing strategy and demonstrated that semi-real time digitalization of patient trajectories can gain significant efficiencies, linking public and private healthcare efforts, increasing transparency, support better quality health services and informing policy makers to target interventions.
| S-EPMC9887331 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Previous studies have shown that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) could potentially promote prosocial behaviors. However, results from randomized controlled trials are inconsistent. The current meta-analysis aimed to assess the effects of anodal and cathodal tDCS using single-session protocols on prosocial behaviors in healthy young adults and explore potential moderators of these effects. The results showed that compared with sham stimulation, anodal (excitatory) stimulation significantly increased (g = 0.27, 95% CI [0.11, 0.43], Z = 3.30, P = 0.001) and cathodal (inhibitory) stimulation significantly decreased prosocial behaviors (g = -0.19, 95% CI [-0.39, -0.01], Z = -1.95, P = 0.051) using a multilevel meta-analytic model. These effects were not significantly modulated by stimulation parameters (e.g. duration, intensity and site) and types of prosocial behavior. The risk of publication bias for the included effects was minimal, and no selective reporting (e.g. P-hacking) was found in the P-curve analysis. This meta-analysis showed that both anodal and cathodal tDCS have small but significant effects on prosocial behaviors. The current study provides evidence that prosocial behaviors are linked to the activity of the 'social brain'. Future studies are encouraged to further explore whether tDCS could effectively treat social dysfunctions in psychiatry disorders.
| S-EPMC8824678 | biostudies-literature