In the pandemic's first year, what predicted who masked, distanced, and backed public health policy? Across sixty-seven countries: loving your country — the healthy way.
A collaboration of 257 researchers surveyed 49,968 people across 67 countries and territories in 2020, measuring national identification, national narcissism, political ideology — and three pandemic outcomes: limiting physical contact, stricter hygiene, and support for public health policies.
one dot ≈ one country in study 1
People who identified strongly with their nation — who feel genuinely tied to their fellow citizens — reported more distancing, more hygiene, and more policy support. On every outcome, national identification was the strongest of the three predictors, beating both national narcissism and political ideology (ps < 0.001 for the comparisons).
bar lengths are ordinal — they show which predictor won, not exact coefficients (those live in the paper's table 2)
Study 2 swapped self-reports for behaviour. Using World Values Survey measures of national identity and Google mobility data from 42 countries, nations with stronger pre-pandemic national identification cut their movement more during April–May 2020 — the survey finding, replicated in where people actually went.
The paper draws a line the public debate usually misses: national identification (“I feel committed to my country and its people”) is not national narcissism (“my country is better and deserves special treatment”). The first predicted cooperation with public health efforts; the second was a consistently weaker predictor. Solidarity scales; chest-thumping doesn't.
Van Bavel, Jay J., Aleksandra Cichocka, Valerio Capraro, … Charles Crabtree, … et al. “National Identity Predicts Public Health Support During a Global Pandemic.” Nature Communications 13:517, 2022.
read the paper →study 1: n = 49,968, 67 countries · study 2: 42 countries, world values survey × google mobility · predictor comparisons p < 0.001; variance figures from the paper · podium bars are ordinal, the scatter is a stylized rendering of figure 4