An analysis of attitudes across 67 countries has revealed that identification with one’s nation predicts both greater engagement with public health behaviours, such as masking and social distancing, and support for public health policies.
The research, co-authored by Dr Aleksandra Cichocka suggests that national identities play a significant and positive role in battling a global pandemic.
The study’s international team of more than 200 researchers, who also come from New York University, Australia’s University of Sydney, Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University, and the University of St. Andrews, among other institutions, recognised the productive role national identity might play in responding to a widespread crisis—in this case, the Covid-19 pandemic.
While Covid-19’s impact has been global, policies and calls for practices to address it have largely been implemented by individual nations, raising the question of the role national identity plays in responding to country-based public health measures.
‘History has undoubtedly shown that nationalism can be a destructive force. But research has also revealed that there is a pro-social side to group identity.’
To weigh this, the researchers aimed to separate national identity, which gauges how strongly people identify with their country, from national narcissism, which is a form of social identity that involves the belief that one’s group—or, in this case, nation—is exceptional but also underappreciated by others.
In their study, the researchers conducted a survey, which included nearly 50,000 respondents across 67 countries, asking the extent to which participants reported adopting public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy measures (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the pandemic (April-May 2020). They also asked about respondents’ political ideology (e.g., left-wing or right-wing) and included questions aimed at capturing national identification and national narcissism.
Overall and across the studied countries, respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies.
Interestingly, unlike left-wing ideology, right-wing political ideology had a positive, moderate correlation with both national identification and national narcissism, but very weak correlations with support for public health measures. This suggests that political ideology may be relatively unimportant for predicting public health behaviour outside the United States, the researchers say. There was one exception: Right-wing political beliefs, across several countries, were associated with less support for Covid-19 public health government policies compared to left-wing political beliefs.
Dr Cichocka, director of the Political Psychology Lab at Kent, said: ‘We see the positive effects, especially for those who feel genuinely proud and close to their nation, rather than those who are mostly concerned about how others see their country.’
Jay Van Bavel, Professor of Psychology at New York University, said: ‘History has undoubtedly shown that nationalism can be a destructive force. But research has also revealed that there is a pro-social side to group identity. This study points to a new and promising possibility—that national identity can be useful in effectively addressing the current pandemic and may serve as a public health resource in the future.’
To better understand if self-reporting was reflected in the actual actions that individuals took, the team conducted a second international study. Consistent with the results from the initial survey, national identification was associated with reduced spatial mobility, suggesting that those with a strong national identity were following public health guidelines by reducing their movements, thereby reducing physical interactions with others.
Their research paper titled ‘National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic’ is published by Nature Communications. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27668-9