Viral Humanity: Lessons From COVID-19

"An international group of researchers in which I participated carried out two surveys with representative cross-sections of Americans, one prior to, and one early in, the COVID-19 pandemic. The overall theme of the surveys was to better understand how people feel about government services, whether they trust officials and bureaucrats to act in citizens' interests, and how the latter relates to trust in fellow citizens."

"How the pandemic impacted racial and ethnic relations, and how differently its impact was felt by people of different races/ethnicities, of different socioeconomic classes, and in different "media silos," are much-discussed topics. While we're all understandably eager to put the pandemic behind us, the degree to which our society suffers from divisions of race and ethnicity has bearing on us all, and if we can draw insights from the impact of the crisis in our rearview mirrors, it's worth having a look at what the evidence says."

Two surveys with representative cross-sections of Americans were conducted, one before and one early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants made incentivized choices in economic decision games, including a generic trust game and trust games with partners identified by racial or ethnic group (non-Hispanic White, Hispanic, African American/Black, or other). The findings indicate that disease outbreaks did not exacerbate intergroup mistrust in the U.S. during 2020; if anything, the trust gap narrowed. Increased gratitude for the service and sacrifices of frontline workers may have fostered greater empathy toward minorities.

Read at Psychology Today