Family still matters: Human social motivation across 42 countries during a global pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals-fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care-might have been affected. To address this question, we gathered data on fundamental social motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) across two waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered both before and during the pandemic (pre-pandemic wave: 32 countries, N = 8998; 3302 male, 5585 female; M age  = 24.43, SD = 7.91; mid-pandemic wave: 29 countries, N = 6917; 2249 male, 4218 female; M age  = 28.59, SD = 11.31). Samples include data collected online (e.g., Prolific, MTurk), at universities, and via community sampling. We found that Disease Avoidance motivation was substantially higher during the pandemic, and that most of the other fundamental social motives showed small, yet significant, differences across waves. Most sensibly, concern with caring for one's children was higher during the pandemic, and concerns with Mate Seeking and Status were lower. Earlier findings showing the prioritization of family motives over mating motives (and even over Disease Avoidance motives) were replicated during the pandemic. Finally, well-being remained positively associated with family-related motives and negatively associated with mating motives during the pandemic, as in the pre-pandemic samples. Our results provide further evidence for the robust primacy of family-related motivations even during this unique disruption of social life.

Disease History and Life History Predict Behavioral Control of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

It is puzzling why countries do not all implement stringent behavioral control measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 even though preventive behaviors have been proven to be the only effective means to stop the pandemic. We provide a novel evolutionary life history explanation whereby pathogenic and parasitic prevalence represents intrinsic rather than extrinsic mortality risk that drives slower life history strategies and the related disease control motivation in all animals but especially humans. Our theory was tested and supported based on publicly available data involving over 150 countries. Countries having a higher historical prevalence of infectious diseases are found to adopt slower life history strategies that are related to prompter COVID-19 containment actions by the government and greater compliance by the population. Findings could afford governments novel insight into the design of more effective COVID-19 strategies that are based on enhancing a sense of control, vigilance, and compliance in the general population.

Debate: Facing uncertainty with(out) a sense of control - cultural influence on adolescents' response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought about healthcare, economic, and psychological crises around the world. The psychological impact on adolescents is likely going to be uneven across different societies, as cultures vary in terms of their dominant learning style that may influence how people cope with uncertainty and perceive their sense of control. We postulate that for adolescents in individualistic cultures where individual learning prevails, their sense of control might be undermined by societal disease-control regulations that restrict personal freedoms, while adolescents' sense of control might increase via participating in societal preventive efforts in collectivistic cultures where social learning is more prevalent. Individual differences regarding one's sense of control would, in turn, have implications for adolescents' short-term adjustments to COVID-19-related challenges and their future development.