Towards a Globally Collaborative Behavioral Science: An Organizational Approach from Pandemic Psychology

The PsyCorona collaboration is a research project to examine processes involved in the COVID-19 pandemic, such as behavior that curbs virus transmission, which may implicate social norms, cooperation, and self-regulation. The study also examines psychosocial consequences of physical distancing strategies and societal lockdown, such as frustration of psychological and social needs, economic stressors, relationship strains, prejudice, psychological stress, and deteriorating mental health (e.g., Brooks et al., 2020). Related consequences were observed in past epidemics such as the 1918 flu pandemic (Dolan, 2020; Honigsbaum, 2019; Jeronimus, 2020). A global collaboration allows us to study the role of culture, and to make generalizable predictions on societal responses to virus infections.