Human Cooperation and the Crises of Climate Change, COVID-19, and Misinformation

Source-credibility information and social norms improve truth discernment and reduce engagement with misinformation online

Misinformation on social media is a pervasive challenge. In this study (N = 415) a social-media simulation was used to test two potential interventions for countering misinformation: a credibility badge and a social norm. The credibility badge was implemented by associating accounts, including participants', with a credibility score. Participants' credibility score was dynamically updated depending on their engagement with true and false posts. To implement the social-norm intervention, participants were provided with both a descriptive norm (i.e., most people do not share misinformation) and an injunctive norm (i.e., sharing misinformation is the wrong thing to do). Both interventions were effective. The social-norm intervention led to reduced belief in false claims and improved discrimination between true and false claims. It also had some positive impact on social-media engagement, although some effects were not robust to alternative analysis specifications. The presence of credibility badges led to greater belief in true claims, lower belief in false claims, and improved discrimination. The credibility-badge intervention also had robust positive impacts on social-media engagement, leading to increased flagging and decreased liking and sharing of false posts. Cumulatively, the results suggest that both interventions have potential to combat misinformation and improve the social-media information landscape.

How perceived coercion polarizes unvaccinated people: The mediating role of conspiracy beliefs

During the COVID-19 pandemic, different policies were implemented to increase vaccination uptake. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories spread widely, and vaccinated versus unvaccinated people increasingly polarized against each other. This study examined the associations between perceived vaccination coercion, conspiracy beliefs and polarization. We tested the relationship of vaccination status with perceived vaccination coercion, conspiracy beliefs, and polarization, with a total sample size of N = 1202 (n = 400 in China, n = 401 in the US, and n = 401 in the UK), among them n = 603 were vaccinated and n = 599 were unvaccinated. As pre-registered, unvaccinated people perceived more vaccination coercion and endorsed more conspiracy theories. Conspiracy mentality was positively related to perceived coercion. Contrary to our hypotheses, vaccinated people were more polarized toward unvaccinated people than vice versa. Finally, conspiracy beliefs mediated the link between perceived coercion and polarization among unvaccinated people.

A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions1, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process2. In April 2020, an influential paper3 proposed 19 policy recommendations ('claims') detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms 'physical distancing' and 'social distancing'. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.

The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social-ecological transformations

Anthropogenic planetary disruptions, from climate change to biodiversity loss, are unprecedented challenges for human societies. Some societies, social groups, cultural practices, technologies and institutions are already disintegrating or disappearing as a result. However, this coupling of socially produced environmental challenges with disruptive social changes-the Anthropocene condition-is not new. From food-producing hunter-gatherers, to farmers, to urban industrial food systems, the current planetary entanglement has its roots in millennia of evolving and accumulating sociocultural capabilities for shaping the cultured environments that our societies have always lived in (sociocultural niche construction). When these transformative capabilities to shape environments are coupled with sociocultural adaptations enabling societies to more effectively shape and live in transformed environments, the social-ecological scales and intensities of these transformations can accelerate through a positive feedback loop of 'runaway sociocultural niche construction'. Efforts to achieve a better future for both people and planet will depend on guiding this runaway evolutionary process towards better outcomes by redirecting Earth's most disruptive force of nature: the power of human aspirations. To guide this unprecedented planetary force, cultural narratives that appeal to human aspirations for a better future will be more effective than narratives of environmental crisis and overstepping natural boundaries. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.

Adaptations to infer fitness interdependence promote the evolution of cooperation

The evolution of cooperation is a major question in the biological and behavioral sciences. While most theoretical studies model cooperation in the context of an isolated interaction (e.g., a Prisoner's Dilemma), humans live in heterogeneous social environments, characterized by large variations in fitness interdependence-the extent to which one's fitness is affected by others. Theoretical and experimental work indicates that humans can infer, and respond to, variations in interdependence. In a heterogeneous ancestral environment, these psychological mechanisms to infer fitness interdependence could have provided a selective advantage, allowing individuals to maximize their fitness by deciding when and with whom to cooperate. Yet, to date, the link between cognitive inference, variation in fitness interdependence, and cooperation remains unclear. Here we introduce a theoretical framework to study the evolution of inference and cooperation in heterogeneous social environments, where individuals experience interactions with varying levels of corresponding interests. Using a combination of evolutionary game theory and agent-based modeling, we model the evolution of adaptive agents, who incur a cost to infer interdependence, in populations of fixed-behavior agents who always cooperate or defect. Our results indicate that natural selection could promote the evolution of psychological mechanisms to infer fitness interdependence, provided that there is enough variation in fitness interdependence to offset the cost of inference. Under certain conditions, the fixation of adaptive agents results in higher levels of cooperation. This depends crucially on the type of inference performed and the features of the interdependence landscape.

Reputation Reminders: When do Eye Cues Promote Prosocial Behavior?

The watching eyes effect has gained significant attention in recent years both from scientists and from policy makers and professionals in the field. The phenomenon posits that the mere presence of eye cues can promote prosocial behavior. However, there is a growing debate about the generality of the effect across various measures and contexts. This review seeks to combine various distinct -and formerly isolated- perspectives by identifying four key components for effective interventions based on the watching eyes effect: Anonymity, crowdedness, costs, and exposure. Eye cues need to reduce perceived anonymity, be placed in non-crowded places, target low-cost prosocial acts and appear for a short amount of time. Next to these conditions, we discuss implications for other cues to reputation and recommend directions that will stimulate further research and applications in society.

Lost in between crises: How do COVID-19 threats influence the motivation to act against climate change and the refugee crisis?

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been found to undermine mental health, it is unclear how it may impact individuals' motivation to tackle other global crises. There are at least two perspectives on how COVID-19 might psychologically impact how people respond to other global crises. The finite-pool-of-worry hypothesis suggests that worrying about one issue might diminish worry about other issues since individuals have a limited capacity of worry. Conversely, the affect-generalization hypothesis advocates that worry about an issue might generalize to other issues and increase general levels of worry. To test these competing hypotheses, the present research investigated how threats activated by the COVID-19 pandemic might affect individuals' interest in and motivation to address climate change (Study 1) and the refugee crisis (Study 2) by assessing pro-environmental behavior and prosocial behavior toward refugees, respectively. The results showed that exposure to COVID-19 threats elevated anxiety levels, and trait anxiety, psychological distance, and future orientation moderated this effect. While COVID-19 threats did not influence pro-environmental and prosocial behavior and intentions, exploratory analyses uncovered that being psychologically closer to COVID-19 might predict an increase in pro-environmental and prosocial behavior and intentions, pointing to the affect-generalization hypothesis.

Residential mobility predicts COVID-19 and seasonal flu vaccination behaviors in the United States

Aim

Vaccination is one of the most effective strategies to contain the transmission of infectious diseases; however, people's intentions and behavior for vaccination vary across different regions and countries around the world. It is not clear how socioecological factors such as residential mobility influence people's vaccination behaviors for infectious diseases.

Methods

We analyzed public data on residential mobility and vaccination rates for COVID-19 and seasonal flu in the United States and explored how residential mobility in the previous year influenced vaccination rates for COVID-19 and seasonal flu (2011-2018) across 50 states of the US. The data were accessed and analyzed in 2021.

Results

Study 1 demonstrated that collective-level residential mobility predicted COVID-19 vaccination rates across the United States (B = -168.162, 95% CI [-307.097, -29.227], adjusted R ² = 0.091, p = 0.019). Study 2 corroborated this finding by documenting that collective-level residential mobility predicted vaccination rates for seasonal flu from 2011 to 2018 across the United States (B = -0.789, 95% CI = [-1.018, -0.56], adjusted R ² = 0.222, p < 0.001). The link between residential mobility and vaccination behavior was robust after controlling relevant variables, including collectivism, cultural tightness-looseness, and sociodemographic variables.

Conclusions

Our research demonstrated that residential mobility is an important socioecological factor that influences people's vaccination behaviors for COVID-19 and seasonal flu. The results enrich our understanding of the socioecological factors that influence vaccination behaviors and have implications for developing tailored interventions to promote vaccination during pandemics of infectious diseases.

Anticipatory Threat Mitigates the Breakdown of Group Cooperation

Humans are exposed to environmental and economic threats that can profoundly affect individual survival and group functioning. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that threat exposure can increase collective action, the effects of threat on decision-making have been mainly investigated at the individual level. Here we examine how threat exposure and concomitant physiological responses modulate cooperation in small groups. Individuals (N = 105, ages 18-34 years) in groups of three were exposed to threat of electric shocks while deciding how much to contribute to a public good. Threat of shock induced a state of physiological freezing and, compared with no-threat conditions, reduced free riding and enabled groups to maintain higher cooperation over time. Exploratory analyses revealed that more cooperative responses under threat were driven by stronger baseline prosociality, suggesting that habitual prosociality is reinforced under threat. The current results support the view that human groups respond to outside threat with increased cooperation.

Social mindfulness predicts concern for nature and immigrants across 36 nations

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice - known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance - a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies.

Ancestral social environments plus nonlinear benefits can explain cooperation in human societies

Human cooperation (paying a cost to benefit others) is puzzling from a Darwinian perspective, particularly in groups with strangers who cannot repay nor are family members. The beneficial effects of cooperation typically increase nonlinearly with the number of cooperators, e.g., increasing returns when cooperation is low and diminishing returns when cooperation is high. Such nonlinearity can allow cooperation between strangers to persist evolutionarily if a large enough proportion of the population are already cooperators. However, if a lone cooperator faces a conflict between the group's and its own interests (a social dilemma), that raises the question of how cooperation arose in the first place. We use a mathematically tractable evolutionary model to formalise a chronological narrative that has previously only been investigated verbally: given that ancient humans interacted mostly with family members (genetic homophily), cooperation evolved first by kin selection, and then persisted in situations with nonlinear benefits as homophily declined or even if interactions with strangers became the norm. The model also predicts the coexistence of cooperators and defectors observed in the human population (polymorphism), and may explain why cooperators in behavioural experiments prefer to condition their contribution on the contributions of others (conditional cooperation in public goods games).

Ripples in the pond: Evidence for contagious cooperative role modeling through moral elevation and calling in a small pre-study

Existing research has identified the importance of role models in the imitation of cooperative behaviors. This Pre-Study attempted to explore the contagion effects of cooperative models. Drawing on goal contagion theory, we proposed that encountering cooperative models could catalyze participants’ cooperation when participants joined new groups without role models, and that moral elevation and calling would play a chain-mediating role in this process. To test the hypothesis, we designed a four-person public goods game consisting of two phases in which participants were formed into teams with different people in each phase. We randomly assigned 108 participants to either a consistent contributor (CC) or control condition. The only difference was that participants in the CC condition encountered a cooperative role model (i.e., CC) in the first phase, while those in the control group did not. The results moderately supported all hypotheses. Briefly, our findings provide empirical evidence supporting the two processes of goal contagion theory: when individuals encounter a CC, they first make inferences about the CC’s goal, as reflected by moral elevation, and then adopt the model’s prosocial goals (i.e., calling), resulting in increased cooperative behaviors in new groups. These findings could extend our understanding of the contagion effect of cooperative modeling, but require high-powered replication studies before such conclusions can be drawn.