Trust as a daily defense against collective disease threats

Abstract

Although the isolated threat of disease often motivates people to avoid others, people need the help and cooperation of others to protect themselves against pandemic disease threats. Therefore, the fear of contracting a highly contagious virus like COVID-19 should motivate people to believe that they can in fact count on the help and cooperation of others for protection. Trusting in others provides the basis to anticipate their cooperation. Therefore, we expected a greater daily threat of contracting COVID-19 to motivate people to trust more in others, providing needed assurance that others would keep them safe from harm. We obtained 4 daily diary samples involving 2794 participants who provided in excess of 18,000 daily observations within the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each day, we tracked (1) disease threat, captured daily by personal concerns about COVID-19 and infection totals in the nearest most populous city, and (2) trust in others, captured daily by expressions of trust in intimates, collective caregivers (e.g., President, Congress), and strangers. Participants in two samples completed 2-month follow-ups. Integrative analyses of the daily diaries revealed that people trusted more in intimates and collective caregivers on days they had greater (vs. less) reason to be concerned about COVID-19. Further integrative analyses of the follow-up data revealed that participants who were initially more likely to trust in others on days when COVID-19 cases in nearby communities spread more rapidly later reported greater confidence that others would keep them safe from harm. That is, they evidenced greater physical, interpersonal, and collective security in social connection than participants who were initially less likely to defensively trust in others on such occasions. The present findings suggest that ecological threats may dynamically motivate people to trust others more than they otherwise would, providing optimism that collectively-faced crises may motivate social cooperation when it is most needed.