Family still matters: Human social motivation across 42 countries during a global pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals-fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care-might have been affected. To address this question, we gathered data on fundamental social motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) across two waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered both before and during the pandemic (pre-pandemic wave: 32 countries, N = 8998; 3302 male, 5585 female; M _age = 24.43, SD = 7.91; mid-pandemic wave: 29 countries, N = 6917; 2249 male, 4218 female; M _age = 28.59, SD = 11.31). Samples include data collected online (e.g., Prolific, MTurk), at universities, and via community sampling. We found that Disease Avoidance motivation was substantially higher during the pandemic, and that most of the other fundamental social motives showed small, yet significant, differences across waves. Most sensibly, concern with caring for one's children was higher during the pandemic, and concerns with Mate Seeking and Status were lower. Earlier findings showing the prioritization of family motives over mating motives (and even over Disease Avoidance motives) were replicated during the pandemic. Finally, well-being remained positively associated with family-related motives and negatively associated with mating motives during the pandemic, as in the pre-pandemic samples. Our results provide further evidence for the robust primacy of family-related motivations even during this unique disruption of social life.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cross-cultural research; Family; Fundamental social motives; Life satisfaction.

Fig. 1

Fundamental Social Motives Pooled Across Countries, Before vs. During COVID-19 Pandemic. Note.Fig. 1a shows aggregated data from the 19 countries in which data were collected both before the pandemic (yellow) and during the pandemic (white). Fig. 1b compares aggregated data from all 32 countries in which data were collected before the pandemic (yellow) versus all 29 countries in which data were collected during the pandemic (white). Disease Avoidance motive is highlighted in green, motives related to mate seeking (i.e., Mate Seeking, Breakup Concern) are highlighted in red, and motives related to long-term familial bonds (i.e., Mate Retention, Kin Care (Family), Kin Care (Children)) are highlighted in blue. Each circle indicates the mean, horizontal lines across each box indicate the median, boxes indicate the second and third quartiles, and vertical lines indicate the first and fourth quartiles. The horizontal dashed line across each figure indicates the scale midpoint. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Fig. 2

Selected Fundamental Social Motives Before vs. During COVID-19 Pandemic in 19 Countries. Note. Selected fundamental social motive subscales are shown for the 19 countries in which data were collected both before the pandemic (solid lines) and during the pandemic (dotted lines). Disease Avoidance motive (DIS) is shown in green, motives related to mate-seeking (i.e., Mate-Seeking (MAT), Breakup Concern (MRB)) are shown in red, and motives related to long-term familial bonds (i.e., Mate Retention (MRT), Kin Care (Family; KCF), Kin Care (Children; KCC)) are shown in blue. KCC scores are not shown for countries in which 10 participants or fewer had children/responded to KCC items (these samples are indicated in Tables S2 and S3). See Supplemental Material Fig. S2 for all fundamental social motive subscales from all 42 countries. Circles indicate means and vertical lines indicate ±1 standard deviation. The horizontal dashed line indicates the scale midpoint.