Effects of cooperative and uncooperative narratives on trust during the COVID-19 pandemic: Experimental evidence

Abstract

To help contain the COVID-19 pandemic, many policymakers and health experts and the media have promoted responsible health behavior by using public narratives highlighting uncooperative behavior, including the lack of social distancing and resistance to various pandemic restrictions and COVID-19 vaccination. However, whether these uncooperative narratives may have detrimental consequences on trust is unclear. Hence, we conducted an online experiment to explore how the exposure to uncooperative and cooperative pandemic narratives affects people's trust in each other. We hypothesized that providing individuals with narratives depicting behaviors that violate (uncooperative narratives) and support pandemic social norms (cooperative narratives) would decrease and increase their trust in others, respectively. We showed that neither of the narratives had any effect on trust.