Does COVID-19 affect people of all classes equally? In the current research, we focus on the social issue of risk inequality during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a nationwide survey conducted in China ( = 1,137), we predicted and found that compared to higher-class individuals, lower-class participants reported a stronger decline in self-rated health as well as economic well-being due to the COVID-19 outbreak. At the same time, we examined participants' beliefs regarding the distribution of risks. The results demonstrated that although lower-class individuals were facing higher risks, they expressed lesser belief in such a risk inequality than their higher-class counterparts. This tendency was partly mediated by their stronger endorsement of system-justifying beliefs. The findings provide novel evidence of the misperception of risk inequality among the disadvantaged in the context of COVID-19. Implications for science and policy are discussed.

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), continues to rage, disclosure of exposure to the virus is of great significance to safety management, especially considering the long latency of the disease. We conducted a survey based on terror management theory of 2,542 people in 71 cities, representing all provinces in mainland China. The results revealed that fear of being isolated influenced disclosure of exposure to the virus and that this influence was mediated by defensive impression management motivation. An inclusive climate buffered both the direct and the indirect effects of fear of isolation on disclosure behaviour via defensive impression management motivation. The implications of these findings for research and safety management during the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

The lockdown measures to contain the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in China in early 2020 was considered effective by the World Health Organization and many academics around the world. At the same time, the Western media labelled these measures as draconian. This research examined the reasons why the Chinese people were willing to support such measures. Based on an online survey of 528 Chinese participants, conducted in April 2020, the results revealed that the participants' instrumental attitudes (e.g., the outcome of the lockdown), but not experiential attitudes (i.e., the experience of the lockdown), were predictive of their support for a lockdown policy. Further analysis showed that those with higher communitarian worldviews had favourable instrumental attitudes and strong support regardless of the level of the perceived severity of the virus, whereas those with lower communitarian worldviews had more favourable instrumental attitudes and policy support when perceived severity was high than when it was low. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

United Nations and World Health Organization data show a positive correlation,  = .53,  < .0001,  = 189, between COVID-19 infection rates and the human development index (HDI). Less wealthy, less educated countries with lower life spans were also more successful in maintaining lower fatality rates,  = .46,  < .0001,  = 189 whereas 9 of the top-10 countries in the world in per capita fatalities due to COVID-19 were Western societies high in HDI. Similar positive correlations were found between COVID-19 infection and fatality rates and a smaller sample of 76 countries measured on Schwartz intellectual autonomy (or individualism), and negative correlations of similar magnitude were found for embeddedness (or collectivism). East Asia was a global leader in preventing the spread of COVID-19 because of a vigilant public concerned for public safety and compliant with public safety measures. African Union leaders coordinated their responses, and bought into a continent-wide African Medical Supplies Platform that prevented panicked competition for scare supplies. Western global media and scholars have not paid attention to the successes of East Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific in fighting the pandemic. It is worth asking why this should be the case; understand the weaknesses of extreme individualism in fighting a pandemic requiring coordinated and unified public response, and consider the lessons for global scholars from the pandemic for doing research in the future.

Growing efforts have been made to pool coronavirus data and control measures from countries and regions to compare the effectiveness of government policies. We examine whether these strategies can explain East Asia's effective control of the COVID-19 pandemic based on time-series data with cross-correlations between the Stringency Index and number of confirmed cases during the early period of outbreaks. We suggest that multidisciplinary empirical research in healthcare and social sciences, personality, and social psychology is needed for a clear understanding of how cultural values, social norms, and individual predispositions interact with policy to affect life-saving behavioural changes in different societies.

This study examined the associations of sociocultural adaptation with individualism and collectivism and the moderating roles of discrimination and social capital in the associations among rural-to-urban migrants ( = 641) in Beijing, China. Results indicated that individualism was associated with poorer adaptation for migrants reporting low perceived discrimination or low social capital. However, migrants reporting high perceived discrimination showed poorer adaptation, regardless of individualism; and migrants reporting high social capital showed better adaptation, regardless of individualism. Collectivism was not related to adaptation. Findings suggest that individualism may be detrimental to migrants' adjustment to a collectivistic society.

Socially desirable responding was tested as a mediator of American and Japanese college student differences in display rules. Americans endorsed the expression of anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, and surprise more than the Japanese. Americans also exhibited more self-deceptive enhancement than the Japanese, and self-deceptive enhancement partially mediated country differences on the endorsement of anger, disgust, happiness, and surprise, but not contempt and fear. These findings highlight the role of self-deceptive enhancement in contributing to expressive display rules and support the point of view that socially desirable responding is a reflection of one's personality and culture rather than a statistical nuisance.

Cultural neuroscience issues from the apparently incompatible combination of neuroscience and cultural psychology. A brief literature sampling suggests, instead, several preliminary topics that demonstrate proof of possibilities: cultural differences in both lower-level processes (e.g. perception, number representation) and higher-order processes (e.g. inferring others' emotions, contemplating the self) are beginning to shed new light on both culture and cognition. Candidates for future cultural neuroscience research include cultural variations in the default (resting) network, which may be social; regulation and inhibition of feelings, thoughts, and actions; prejudice and dehumanization; and neural signatures of fundamental warmth and competence judgments.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was first reported in China, and spread to 29 regions, affecting over 8000 people worldwide. For the general public, the psychological impact of SARS may have been greater than the physical health danger of the disease. The present paper proposes the influence of psychological factors on people's cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses during the SARS outbreak. The various papers in this special issue of the Journal reveal how people have reacted during the SARS outbreak: People's general coping styles may be related to their health behavior during the outbreak. Cultural differences were evident in the perception of SARS, and individuals' perceptual styles may have influenced their ability to cope with the outbreak. The way in which individuals coped with SARS-related stressful events was different from their usual practices of managing daily stress. Individual differences in the adoption of preventive measures were related to the distinct susceptibility to several social-cognitive biases.

The present study examines the psychological impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) by exploring the coping strategies and health behaviors enacted in response to the SARS epidemic. Hierarchical linear regression indicated that the use of wishful thinking in response to the threat of SARS was related to both avoiding public places and avoiding people perceived to be possible  carriers  of  the  SARS  virus,  but  was  not  associated  with  the  use  of more adaptive health behaviors, such as using disinfectants and hand washing. Conversely, those who reported engaging in empathic responding in response to the threat of SARS were both less likely to report avoiding people perceived as being at a high risk for SARS and more likely to report engaging in effective health behaviors. Support seeking was not a significant predictor of the health behaviors examined in the present study. Results are discussed in terms of coping with health threats and health promotion.

In two studies conducted in Hong Kong during and immediately after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), participants displayed several social cognitive biases when they estimated the prevalence of and inferred the motives underlying SARS preventive behaviors. First, participants who practiced preventive behaviors (practicers) consistently estimated that more people practiced such behaviors than did non-practicers (false consensus bias). Second, for some preventive behaviors, participants believed that their own behaviors were more motivated by prosocial concerns (relative to self-interest) than were other practicers (pluralistic ignorance). Finally, non-practicers underestimated the importance of prosocial concerns underlying some preventive behaviors (actor-observer bias). We discussed the relevance of these social cognitive biases to health education and to Hong Kong people's psychological reactions to SARS.