How does a life-threatening pandemic affect a culture? The Theory of Social Change, Cultural Evolution, and Human Development predicts that danger, as indicated by rising death rates and narrowing social worlds, shifts human psychology and behavior toward that found in small-scale, collectivistic, and rural subsistence ecologies. In particular, mortality salience, collectivism, and engagement in subsistence activities should increase as death rates rise and the social world retracts. Studies on the psychological response to the pandemic in the United States confirmed these predicted increases. The present study sought to generalize these previous findings by comparing the frequency of conceptually relevant linguistic terms used in Google searches and Twitter posts in the United States, Japan, Indonesia, and Mexico for 30 days before the coronavirus pandemic began in each country with frequencies of the same terms for 30 days after. Generally, we found that mortality salience increased to the extent that countries experienced excess COVID mortality; collectivism increased to the extent that countries experienced excess COVID mortality and increased mortality salience; and subsistence activities increased to the extent that countries experienced excess COVID mortality and/or stay-at-home-policies. Almost all these increases went beyond the general increase in internet use, which was a control variable in all analyses. These findings support a growing body of research documenting a human response to ecological danger.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 死亡率显着性、集体主义和生存活动的增加：对美国、印度尼西亚、墨西哥和日本在线适应的理论驱动分析

危及生命的流行病如何影响文化？社会变迁、文化进化和人类发展理论预测，死亡率上升和社会世界缩小所表明的危险会使人类心理和行为转向小规模、集体主义和农村生存生态。特别是，随着死亡率的上升和社会的退缩，死亡率的显着性、集体主义和对生存活动的参与应该增加。对美国大流行的心理反应的研究证实了这些预测的增长。本研究试图通过比较美国、日本、印度尼西亚和墨西哥在冠状病毒大流行之前 30 天内在 Google 搜索和 Twitter 帖子中使用的概念相关语言术语的频率来概括这些先前的发现，频率为30 天后的条款相同。一般来说，我们发现，国家新冠死亡率过高时，死亡率的显着性就会增加；当国家的新冠死亡率过高且死亡率显着性增加时，集体主义就会增强；如果一些国家的新冠死亡率过高和/或采取了居家政策，那么生存活动就会增加。几乎所有这些增长都超出了互联网使用的总体增长，而互联网使用是所有分析中的控制变量。这些发现支持了越来越多记录人类对生态危险反应的研究。