Social norms, the unwritten rules governing behavior, vary significantly across societies, influencing everything from religious practices to public health responses. The concept of 'cultural tightness' describes societies with strong norms and severe punishments for deviations, contrasting with 'loose' cultures that are more permissive. Tightness-looseness theory posits that societies facing chronic threats (disease, warfare, etc.) develop tighter cultures for survival, while those with fewer threats develop looser cultures fostering innovation. This theory is supported by existing research, but the COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to examine whether a major global threat leads to immediate cultural tightening or maintains cultural stability. Understanding this dynamic is crucial for predicting societal responses to future crises and developing effective interventions. This study investigates this question by examining changes in social norms across a diverse set of countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging the variation in disease intensity to understand the mechanisms driving norm changes.

Existing research strongly supports the association between societal threats and the development of tighter or looser cultures. Studies using cross-sectional surveys, ethnographic data, and long-term experiments have shown a correlation between historical exposure to threats and the strength of social norms. For instance, tighter societies tend to have stricter socio-political institutions, less debt, and stronger norms around punishment. Conversely, looser societies are more open to innovation but may struggle with collective risks. Recent work has even demonstrated that looser societies experienced more difficulties in controlling COVID-19 cases and deaths. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity to test the resilience of cultural tightness in the face of an unprecedented global threat. While some suggest that such threats would naturally lead to a tightening of social norms, others argue that cultural evolution is a slow process and that norm strength may remain stable in the early stages of a threat.

This study employed a two-wave survey design. Wave 1 collected data from April to December 2019 (pre-pandemic), while Wave 2 collected data from March to July 2020 (early pandemic stages). The survey included 30,431 respondents from 43 countries and 55 cities. The researchers measured five outcomes: (i) tightness-looseness using a standard six-item scale; (ii) situation-specific norm strength regarding actions like stealing and breaking into locations; (iii) metanorms (appropriateness of responses to norm-breakers); (iv) frequency of punishing norm-breakers; and (v) handwashing norms. The study also collected data on respondents' beliefs about COVID-19 prevalence and fear, as well as government stringency (using the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker). The researchers used multilevel models with random intercepts to analyze the data, accounting for individual, city, and country-level variations. They further conducted equivalence tests to determine the practical significance of changes observed. The study was pre-registered with the Open Science Framework.

The study revealed a significant increase in handwashing norms after the COVID-19 pandemic's emergence. This change was robust across various models and subsamples and was most pronounced for handwashing situations directly relevant to COVID-19 prevention. Conversely, cultural tightness and punishment frequency showed a small but statistically significant decrease. No other significant robust changes were observed in situation-specific norms or metanorms. The analyses also explored potential mechanisms underlying these changes. Fear of COVID-19 was significantly associated with both changes in tightness and handwashing norms, while the impact of perceived prevalence and government stringency was less robust. The non-significant findings regarding most norms are attributable to the absence of substantial changes, not to a lack of statistical power.

The findings suggest that even a profound global crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic does not lead to dramatic short-term changes in most social norms. The notable exception is handwashing, a norm directly relevant to mitigating the pandemic threat. The observed slight decrease in cultural tightness and punishment frequency might reflect temporary adjustments in response to the crisis, rather than a fundamental shift in cultural values. Several interpretations are offered. One possibility is that cultural evolution is slow, and longer timeframes are needed to observe substantial changes in norms in response to a threat. Another is that different threats may elicit changes in different norms; for example, a pandemic may strengthen hygiene norms, while an earthquake might emphasize helping behaviors. Finally, the researchers propose that threats that are covert, abstract, and less visible might produce different tightening dynamics than concrete and visible threats.

This study demonstrates that, at least in the short-term, social norms exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of major global threats, with only those norms directly related to mitigating the threat showing significant changes. The small decrease in tightness and punishment frequency warrants further investigation. Future research should explore the long-term effects of the pandemic on social norms and examine how different types of threats may interact with and shape norms across various time scales. Furthermore, additional research should consider potential confounding factors and moderators that could influence norm change dynamics during crises.

The study used convenience samples of students and non-students, potentially limiting generalizability to other populations. The focus on the early stages of the pandemic prevents conclusions about long-term impacts. While the two-wave design helps address endogeneity, it cannot entirely rule out time trends or confounding factors, and the power of the mechanism analysis may have been insufficient to detect small effects. The study also does not conclusively establish causal relationships between the mechanisms and the observed changes in social norms.