This article aims to demonstrate the effects of national culture on countries’ COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates when controlling for GDP and population age over 65. The author measured various cultural dimensions derived from GLOBE and tested it against the country’s COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates. The author found a significant relationship between culture and COVID-19 outcomes suggesting that culture, beyond only GDP and age, may predict COVID-19 outcomes.

This article examines the relationship between the tightness-looseness of a culture and the variation of COVID-19 cases and deaths through October 2020. With COVID-19 data retrieved from Our World in Data from 57 countries with tightness-looseness figures, the article found the cultures with high levels of tightness had fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths when compared to countries with high levels of looseness. Results suggest support of the evolutionary game theoretic model proposing that people in tight cultures may cooperate with more urgency when under collective threat than people in loose cultures.

Researchers used various hypotheses to determine if cross-country differences in trust and cooperation would predict prosocial COVID-19 responses and policies. Using individual surveys from 34,526 participants from 41 countries, there were no significant associations between trust and cooperation and prosocial behavior, motivation, regulation, or stringency of policies. While the researchers did find significant variation among cross-country individuals, these results were unable to predict country-level prosocial responses.

This research examines how national culture influences the speed of COVID-19 spread in different countries. Three studies were conducted, and five national cultural dimensions were found to be significantly related to the speed of COVID-19 spread in the initial stages of the pandemic. These dimensions are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, humane orientation, in-group collectivism, and cultural tightness. The research found that COVID-19 spreads faster in countries with small power distance and strong uncertainty avoidance, low humane orientation and high in-group collectivism, and slower in countries with high cultural tightness.

Humans, just like other mammals, tend to allow greater sexual freedom for men rather than women. Furthermore, females are burdened with the majority of parenting. Do parenting costs limit sexual unrestrictedness to a different degree for males and females? The authors find that across 48 cultures, as women’s parenting costs decreased through improved physiological and economic conditions, women’s sexual unrestrictedness increased.