ArticleHuman behavior and emerging technologies2021
COVID-19 shifts mortality salience, activities, and values in the United States: Big data analysis of online adaptation.
Article in Human behavior and emerging technologies, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Developing health and environmental warning messages about red meat: An online experiment.PloS one · 2022Trial
- Learning as a shield against death: a 10-day daily diary study examining mortality salience and academic engagement among college students.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
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- Mortality salience and helping behavior amidst public crisis: cross-sectional evidence during COVID-19.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Two years COVID-19 pandemic: Development of university students' mental health 2020-2022.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Exploring the impact of the pandemic on the relationship between individual types and the natural environment:Current research in ecological and social psychology · 2023Article
- Human behavior in the time of COVID-19: Learning from big data.Frontiers in big data · 2023Review
- The communication path and improvement strategy of symbolic culture of sneaker consumption culture using the big data analysis.PloS one · 2023Article
- The Impact of Mortality Salience, Negative Emotions and Cultural Values on Suicidal Ideation in COVID-19: A Conditional Process Model.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- The proximal and distal effects of mortality salience on COVID-19-related health perceptions and intentions.Journal of applied social psychology · 2022Article
- Morbid Polarization: Exposure to COVID-19 and Partisan Disagreement about Pandemic Response.Political psychology · 2022Article
- A qualitative study of how COVID-19 impacts on Australians' hopes and dreams.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Heavy crisis, new perspectives? Investigating the role of consumption, time wealth and meaning construction during countrywide Covid-19 lockdown in Germany.Current research in ecological and social psychology · 2022Article
- Cortisol awakening response among Latinx and Black students transitioning to college prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.Current research in ecological and social psychology · 2022Article
- The Effect of Fear of COVID-19 on Green Purchase Behavior in Pakistan: A Multi-Group Analysis Between Infected and Non-infected.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Personal experience with Covid-19 is associated with increased environmental concern and pro-environmental behavioral intentions.Current research in ecological and social psychology · 2022Article
- Children during coronavirus: Israeli preschool children' s perspectives.Current research in ecological and social psychology · 2022Article
- A Model of How Shifting Intelligence Drives Social Movements.Journal of Intelligence · 2021Article
- Shifts in ecology, behavior, values, and relationships during the coronavirus pandemic: Survival threat, subsistence activities, conservation of resources, and interdependent families.Current research in ecological and social psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
What is the effect of a life-threatening pandemic at the societal level? An expanded Theory of Social Change, Cultural Evolution, and Human Development predicts that, during a period of increasing survival threat and decreasing prosperity, humans will shift toward the psychology and behavior typical of the small-scale, collectivistic, and rural subsistence ecologies in which we evolved. In particular, subjective mortality salience, engagement in subsistence activities, and collectivism will all increase, while the aspiration to be wealthy will decrease. Because coronavirus has forced unprecedented proportions of human activity online, we tested hypotheses derived from the theory by analyzing big data samples for 70 days before and 70 days after the coronavirus pandemic stimulated President Trump to declare a national emergency. Google searches were used for an exploratory study; the exploratory study was followed by three independent replications on Twitter, internet forums, and blogs. Across all four internet platforms, terms related to subjective mortality salience, engagement in subsistence activities, and collectivism showed massive increases. These findings, coupled with prior research testing this theory, indicate that humans may have an evolutionarily conditioned response to the level of death and availability of material resources in society. More specifically, humans may shift their behavior and psychology toward that found in subsistence ecologies under conditions of high mortality and low prosperity or, conversely, toward behavior and psychology found in modern commercial ecologies under conditions of low mortality and high prosperity.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.