Who do we trust and how do we cope with COVID-19? A mixed-methods sequential exploratory approach to understanding supportive messages across 35 cultures

The study addresses how people across societies navigated the early COVID-19 crisis through trust and coping. The pandemic generated widespread uncertainty, stress, and anxiety, elevating the importance of trustworthy guidance and effective coping strategies. Misplaced trust or maladaptive coping could yield harmful outcomes. The research focuses on two core psychological constructs—trust (belief in the ability, integrity, and benevolence of targets such as God, government, science/healthcare, the community, and the affected) and coping (cognitive/behavioral strategies to manage stress). The study aims to identify whom people trusted and how they coped during the early outbreak, and to examine how cultural (individualism–collectivism, tightness–looseness), socioeconomic (globalization), and epidemiological (pandemic severity) factors relate to trust targets and coping strategies. Two research questions guided the qualitative phase: RQ1: Who were the trusted targets and how were they trusted? RQ2: What coping strategies were used and how were they used to manage COVID-19-related stress?

Prior work links trust to information processing, treatment-seeking, and coping effectiveness during pandemics. Interpersonal trust facilitates help-seeking and positive interpretation of support. During COVID-19, studies found associations between trust in God and reduced stress in some religious groups, trust in mentors and reduced difficulties among adolescents, and trust in government with adaptive coping among frontline workers. Cultural dimensions influence pandemic responses: individualism has been associated with lower compliance with lockdowns and higher anxiety; cultural tightness relates to higher trust in officials and masking as civic duty. Globalization can erode traditional values and reduce social trust, potentially shaping coping resources, and has been linked to higher COVID-19 fatality across countries. Evidence on how pandemic severity relates to coping is mixed. Overall, cultural, socioeconomic, and epidemiological contexts likely shape trust targets and coping strategies, yet comprehensive cross-cultural analyses of their interplay during COVID-19 remain scarce.

Design: Mixed-methods sequential exploratory design. Phase 1 qualitative analysis identified trust targets and coping strategies from supportive messages; Phase 2 quantitative analyses examined associations among themes and with society-level indicators. Sampling and data collection: Between April 9–20, 2020, an online survey across 55 societies yielded 18,171 participants; 10,072 community adults (55.43%) from 35 societies elected to write supportive messages to individuals affected by COVID-19. Demographics of message writers: 50.1% female, mean age 42.49 years (range 18–79), 70.3% employed; 60.9% with bachelor’s degree or above. Attention checks ensured data quality. Ethics approval obtained from the Human Subjects Ethics Sub-committee of the authors’ institution. Qualitative data and translation: 10,072 messages (128,757 words; mean length 12.8 words; range 1–181) in 23 languages were translated into English by professional translators familiar with local cultures and verified by authors. Messages were merged into a single dataset. Qualitative analysis: Reflective thematic analysis and conceptual content analysis were used (Microsoft Excel 2210). Three coders independently coded messages for two predefined themes (trust and coping), iteratively generating and refining subthemes. Unit of analysis was the respondent’s message; multiple codes could be assigned per message. Interrater reliability was assessed on a random 11.56% subsample (n=1,164), with average Fleiss’ Kappa = 0.86 (range 0.67–0.99), indicating high agreement. Final coding frame identified five trust subthemes (God; a larger us; country/government; science/healthcare; those affected) and six coping subthemes (interpersonal/social; religious/spiritual; acceptance; blame; wishful thinking; strength-based). Quantitative phase: For each society (n=35), counts of messages per subtheme were computed. Using SPSS 28, society-level correlations were examined: (1) among five trust targets; (2) among six coping strategies; (3) between trust targets and coping strategies; and (4) with society-level indicators. Where multiple trust targets related to a coping strategy, regressions assessed joint effects. Societal indicators: Pandemic severity indexed by total confirmed COVID-19 cases (ECDC). Globalization from the KOF Globalization Index. Individualism from Hofstede. Cultural tightness from Gelfand et al. Analyses examined correlations and selected regressions at the society level.

Qualitative findings: Five trust targets emerged—God; a larger us; country/government; science/healthcare; and those affected. Six coping strategies emerged—interpersonal/social; religious/spiritual; acceptance; blame; wishful thinking; and strength-based coping. Descriptive rates (messages per thousand across the corpus) included: Trust in God 89.46; a larger us 65.55; country/government 7.64; science/healthcare 27.60; those affected 7.45. Coping: religious/spiritual 53.02; interpersonal/social 181.39; strength-based 629.77; wishful thinking 349.29; acceptance 11.91; blame 1.99. Associations among trust targets and coping strategies: Trust in science/healthcare positively correlated with trust in a larger us (r=0.293, p=0.003). Strength-based coping negatively correlated with wishful thinking (r=-0.48, p=0.003) and acceptance (r=-0.45, p=0.001). Interpersonal/social coping positively correlated with blame (r=0.53, p=0.001). Associations between trust and coping (Table 5): Trust in God correlated with religious/spiritual coping (r=0.644, p<0.001). Trust in a larger us was negatively associated with strength-based coping (r=-0.50, p<0.05) and positively with wishful thinking (r=0.51, p<0.05). Trust in science/healthcare correlated with interpersonal/social coping (r=0.41, p<0.05) and blame (r=0.38, p<0.05). Trust in those affected was negatively associated with acceptance (r=-0.39, p<0.05) and positively with religious/spiritual coping (r=0.36, p<0.05). Regression analysis supported the positive prediction of wishful thinking by trust in a larger us (reported B=6.85, p≈0.03), while trust in science/healthcare did not significantly predict wishful thinking in the joint model. Society-level correlates (Table 6): Total confirmed cases positively correlated with trust in a larger us (r=0.36, p<0.01) and trust in science/healthcare (r=0.50, p<0.01), and with wishful thinking (r=0.42, p<0.05). Globalization negatively correlated with trust in God (r=-0.58, p<0.01) and positively with blame (r=0.40, p<0.05). Cultural tightness positively correlated with trust in those affected (r=0.66, p<0.01). Individualism negatively correlated with strength-based coping (r=-0.59, p<0.01) and positively with interpersonal/social coping (r=0.41, p<0.05), acceptance (r=0.46, p<0.01), and blame (r=0.38, p<0.05). For interpersonal/social coping, acceptance, and blame, regressions with multiple societal predictors were nonsignificant (p>0.061).

The study demonstrates that during the early COVID-19 outbreak, people’s supportive messages reflected distinct trust targets and coping strategies that varied across societies and related systematically to cultural, socioeconomic, and epidemiological contexts. Trust in science/healthcare co-occurred with trust in collective efforts (“a larger us”), suggesting that attending to scientific guidance emphasizes the need for coordinated action. Strength-based coping inversely related to wishful thinking and acceptance, consistent with a focus on personal agency rather than passive or unrealistic responses. The positive association between interpersonal/social coping and blame suggests that bolstering ingroup cohesion may coincide with attributing fault to outgroups. Trust–coping linkages included strong alignment of trust in God with religious/spiritual coping, and trust in those affected with lower acceptance, implying that confidence in the afflicted fosters a nonresigned stance. Trust in a larger us was tied to more wishful thinking and less strength-based coping, indicating that reliance on collective control may engender optimistic expectations while attenuating emphasis on personal strengths. At the society level, greater pandemic severity corresponded to higher trust in science/healthcare and a larger us, as well as more wishful thinking—consistent with heightened urgency and psychological burden. Globalization related to lower trust in God, aligning with detraditionalization, while cultural tightness related to greater trust in those affected, possibly reflecting beliefs in self-control and compliance for the collective good. Individualism was associated with less strength-based coping and more interpersonal/social coping, acceptance, and blame, highlighting cultural influences on coping repertoires. Together, findings address the research questions by mapping who is trusted and how people cope across cultures during crisis, and by identifying contextual factors that shape these patterns.

This multinational mixed-methods study identified five trust targets and six coping strategies from 10,072 supportive messages across 35 societies during the early COVID-19 outbreak, and showed how cultural, socioeconomic, and epidemiological factors differentially relate to these trust–coping patterns. Methodologically, it demonstrates the feasibility of large-scale qualitative analysis integrated with society-level quantitative modeling. Practically, it underscores the value of fostering meaningful virtual connections during physical distancing and informs the design of psychological support interventions sensitive to cultural and contextual factors for current and future public health emergencies. Future research should enable interactive (two-way) designs to examine dynamic trust formation, use ecologically valid intensive longitudinal methods (e.g., experience sampling) to assess the effectiveness of coping strategies across contexts, expand the set of societal predictors (e.g., social axioms), and investigate individual-level determinants alongside society-level dynamics.

The study analyzes optional supportive messages written during a brief early-outbreak window, which may limit generalizability; message writers differed from non-writers on demographics. Messages were often brief and analyzed at the society level, entailing aggregation that precludes individual-level inferences. The design does not capture dynamic, interactive trust formation. The effectiveness and intensity of specific coping strategies could not be directly assessed. Only a subset of potential societal factors (individualism, cultural tightness, globalization, pandemic severity) was examined.