A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19

Kai Ruggeri^{1

2

3}, Friederike Stock^{4

5}, S Alexander Haslam⁶, Valerio Capraro⁷, Paulo Boggio^{8

9}, Naomi Ellemers¹⁰, Aleksandra Cichocka¹¹, Karen M Douglas¹¹, David G Rand¹², Sander van der Linden¹³, Mina Cikara¹⁴, Eli J Finkel^{15

16}, James N Druckman¹⁷, Michael J A Wohl¹⁸, Richard E Petty¹⁹, Joshua A Tucker²⁰, Azim Shariff²¹, Michele Gelfand²², Dominic Packer²³, Jolanda Jetten⁶, Paul A M Van Lange^{24

25}, Gordon Pennycook²⁶, Ellen Peters^{27

28}, Katherine Baicker²⁹, Alia Crum³⁰, Kim A Weeden²⁶, Lucy Napper²³, Nassim Tabri¹⁸, Jamil Zaki²², Linda Skitka³¹, Shinobu Kitayama³², Dean Mobbs^{33

34}, Cass R Sunstein¹⁴, Sarah Ashcroft-Jones^{35

36}, Anna Louise Todsen³⁷, Ali Hajian³⁸, Sanne Verra¹⁰, Vanessa Buehler³⁹, Maja Friedemann⁴⁰, Marlene Hecht^{4

5}, Rayyan S Mobarak⁴¹, Ralitsa Karakasheva⁴², Markus R Tünte⁴³, Siu Kit Yeung⁴⁴, R Shayna Rosenbaum^{45

46}, Žan Lep^{47

48}, Yuki Yamada⁴⁹, Sa-Kiera Tiarra Jolynn Hudson⁵⁰, Lucía Macchia⁵¹, Irina Soboleva⁵², Eugen Dimant^{53

54}, Sandra J Geiger⁵⁵, Hannes Jarke⁵⁶, Tobias Wingen⁵⁷, Jana B Berkessel⁵⁸, Silvana Mareva^{59

60}, Lucy McGill^{61

62}, Francesca Papa⁶³, Bojana Većkalov⁶⁴, Zeina Afif⁶⁵, Eike K Buabang⁶⁶, Marna Landman⁶⁷, Felice Tavera⁶⁸, Jack L Andrews^{36

69}, Aslı Bursalıoğlu⁷⁰, Zorana Zupan⁷¹, Lisa Wagner^{72

73}, Joaquín Navajas^{74

75

76}, Marek Vranka⁷⁷, David Kasdan⁷⁸, Patricia Chen^{79

80}, Kathleen R Hudson³¹, Lindsay M Novak³¹, Paul Teas³¹, Nikolay R Rachev⁸¹, Matteo M Galizzi⁸², Katherine L Milkman⁸³, Marija Petrović⁸⁴, Jay J Van Bavel⁸⁵, Robb Willer⁸⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York City, NY, USA. kai.ruggeri@columbia.edu.
² Policy Research Group, Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. kai.ruggeri@columbia.edu.
³ 274th ASOS, US Air Force/New York Air National Guard, Syracuse, NY, United States. kai.ruggeri@columbia.edu.
⁴ Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
⁵ Department of Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
⁶ University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
⁷ University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
⁸ Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, Brazil.
⁹ National Institute of Science and Technology on Social and Affective Neuroscience, CNPq, São Paulo, Brazil.
¹⁰ Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
¹¹ University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
¹² Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹³ Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
¹⁴ Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
¹⁶ Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
¹⁷ Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
¹⁸ Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
¹⁹ Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
²⁰ Department of Politics & Center for Social Media and Politics, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
²¹ Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
²² Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
²³ Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA.
²⁴ Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
²⁵ Global Faculty, Social and Economic Behavior, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
²⁶ Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
²⁷ Center for Science Communication Research, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
²⁸ Psychology Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
²⁹ University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
³⁰ Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
³¹ University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
³² University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
³³ Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
³⁴ Computation and Neural Systems Program, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
³⁵ Department of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York City, NY, USA.
³⁶ Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
³⁷ Department of Social Policy and Evaluation, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
³⁸ University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
³⁹ Cowry Consulting, London, UK.
⁴⁰ University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
⁴¹ Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁴² Junior Researcher Programme, Cambridge, UK.
⁴³ Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
⁴⁴ Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
⁴⁵ Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁴⁶ Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁴⁷ Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
⁴⁸ Centre for Applied Epistemology, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
⁴⁹ Faculty of Arts and Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
⁵⁰ Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁵¹ City, University of London, London, UK.
⁵² Duke Kunshan University, Kunshan, China.
⁵³ Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁵⁴ CESifo, Munich, Germany.
⁵⁵ Environmental Psychology, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
⁵⁶ Policy Research Group, Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁵⁷ University of Bonn, University Hospital Bonn, Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine, Bonn, Germany.
⁵⁸ Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.
⁵⁹ MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁶⁰ Psychology Department, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
⁶¹ University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
⁶² University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
⁶³ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, France.
⁶⁴ University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
⁶⁵ The World Bank, Washington DC, USA.
⁶⁶ Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
⁶⁷ Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, Johannesburg, South Africa.
⁶⁸ Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁶⁹ University College, Oxford, UK.
⁷⁰ Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁷¹ Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁷² Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁷³ Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁷⁴ Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁷⁵ Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁷⁶ Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁷⁷ Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
⁷⁸ Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
⁷⁹ University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
⁸⁰ National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
⁸¹ Department of General, Experimental, Developmental, and Health Psychology, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia, Bulgaria.
⁸² Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics, London, UK.
⁸³ The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁸⁴ Department of Psychology & Laboratory for Research of Individual Differences, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁸⁵ Department of Psychology & Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
⁸⁶ Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

PMID: 38093007
PMCID: PMC10764287
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06840-9

A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19

Kai Ruggeri et al. Nature. 2024 Jan.

. 2024 Jan;625(7993):134-147.

doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06840-9. Epub 2023 Dec 13.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York City, NY, USA. kai.ruggeri@columbia.edu.
² Policy Research Group, Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. kai.ruggeri@columbia.edu.
³ 274th ASOS, US Air Force/New York Air National Guard, Syracuse, NY, United States. kai.ruggeri@columbia.edu.
⁴ Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany.
⁵ Department of Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
⁶ University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia.
⁷ University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
⁸ Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, Brazil.
⁹ National Institute of Science and Technology on Social and Affective Neuroscience, CNPq, São Paulo, Brazil.
¹⁰ Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
¹¹ University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
¹² Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹³ Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
¹⁴ Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
¹⁶ Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
¹⁷ Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
¹⁸ Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
¹⁹ Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
²⁰ Department of Politics & Center for Social Media and Politics, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
²¹ Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
²² Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
²³ Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA.
²⁴ Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam, Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
²⁵ Global Faculty, Social and Economic Behavior, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
²⁶ Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
²⁷ Center for Science Communication Research, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
²⁸ Psychology Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA.
²⁹ University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
³⁰ Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
³¹ University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
³² University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
³³ Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
³⁴ Computation and Neural Systems Program, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
³⁵ Department of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York City, NY, USA.
³⁶ Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
³⁷ Department of Social Policy and Evaluation, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
³⁸ University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
³⁹ Cowry Consulting, London, UK.
⁴⁰ University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
⁴¹ Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁴² Junior Researcher Programme, Cambridge, UK.
⁴³ Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
⁴⁴ Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
⁴⁵ Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁴⁶ Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
⁴⁷ Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
⁴⁸ Centre for Applied Epistemology, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
⁴⁹ Faculty of Arts and Science, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
⁵⁰ Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁵¹ City, University of London, London, UK.
⁵² Duke Kunshan University, Kunshan, China.
⁵³ Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁵⁴ CESifo, Munich, Germany.
⁵⁵ Environmental Psychology, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
⁵⁶ Policy Research Group, Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁵⁷ University of Bonn, University Hospital Bonn, Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine, Bonn, Germany.
⁵⁸ Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.
⁵⁹ MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁶⁰ Psychology Department, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
⁶¹ University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
⁶² University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
⁶³ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, France.
⁶⁴ University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
⁶⁵ The World Bank, Washington DC, USA.
⁶⁶ Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
⁶⁷ Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, Johannesburg, South Africa.
⁶⁸ Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
⁶⁹ University College, Oxford, UK.
⁷⁰ Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁷¹ Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁷² Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁷³ Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
⁷⁴ Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁷⁵ Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁷⁶ Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁷⁷ Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
⁷⁸ Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
⁷⁹ University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
⁸⁰ National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
⁸¹ Department of General, Experimental, Developmental, and Health Psychology, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia, Bulgaria.
⁸² Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics, London, UK.
⁸³ The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
⁸⁴ Department of Psychology & Laboratory for Research of Individual Differences, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁸⁵ Department of Psychology & Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
⁸⁶ Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

PMID: 38093007
PMCID: PMC10764287
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06840-9

Abstract

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions¹, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process². In April 2020, an influential paper³ proposed 19 policy recommendations ('claims') detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms 'physical distancing' and 'social distancing'. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

D.R. reports receiving research funding in the form of gifts from Google and Meta. K.B. reports a Director role at Eli Lilly. C.S. reports being an unpaid advisor for the US Department of Homeland Security and a senior advisor to the Boston Consulting Group. J.A.T. reportings receiving administrative and grant funding from Facebook, collaborating with Meta and serving as a Senior Advisor at Kroll. The lead author (K.R.) did not permit any influence over the final version of the writing. All other authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

**Fig. 1. Reviewer-assessed effect size for each claim and the qualitative rating.**
The y axis shows the reviewer-assessed effect size for each claim; the x axis shows the qualitative rating (from theory only to widely tested). Each set of claims is represented by a different icon. Most claims were confirmed as having small-to-medium effect sizes, including those tested and replicated in real-world contexts. The strongest finding is indicated by the globe on the right, near the top, which shows the claim about culture (see Table 1) was widely tested in multiple studies and the results were consistent with the original Van Bavel et al. paper at roughly a medium effect size. A legend for each icon to represent the 19 claims is presented below the graph.

**Extended Data Fig. 1. Breakdown of articles reviewed by claim.**
Each box in the figure represents an article reviewed, with the color indicating which claim it fit under. For this figure, all sections within claim 7 are treated as a single claim due to most papers in that claim covering multiple sections. The size of each box reflects how many reviewers gave the article a rating. Specific claim colors are indicated in the legend.

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

1. National Academies Press. Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy (National Academies Press, 2012).
1. Fact sheet: new progress on using behavioral science insights to better serve the American people. whitehouse.gov https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/15/fact-sh... (2016).
1. Van Bavel JJ, et al. Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nat. Hum. Behav. 2020;4:460–471. doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-0884-z. - DOI - PubMed
1. Hodges R, Caperchione E, van Helden J, Reichard C, Sorrentino D. The role of scientific expertise in COVID-19 policy-making: evidence from four European countries. Public Org. Rev. 2022;22:249–267. doi: 10.1007/s11115-022-00614-z. - DOI
1. Dowd JB, et al. Demographic science aids in understanding the spread and fatality rates of COVID-19. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA. 2020;117:9696–9698. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2004911117. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms

Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions
Actions

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources
Medical
- MedlinePlus Health Information
Miscellaneous
- NCI CPTAC Assay Portal

Save citation to file

Email citation

Add to Collections

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search

Create a file for external citation management software

Your RSS Feed

A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19

Affiliations

A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

Figures

References

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

Medical

Miscellaneous