Abstract
It has become increasingly clear that COVID-19 transmits between
individuals. It stands to reason that the spread of the virus depends on
sociocultural ecologies that facilitate or inhibit social contact. In
particular, the community-level tendency to engage with strangers and
freely choose friends, called relational mobility (RM), entails
increased opportunities to interact with a larger and more variable
range of others. It may therefore be associated with a faster spread of
infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Here, we tested this
possibility by analyzing growth curves of confirmed cases and deaths of
COVID-19 in the first 30 days of the outbreaks in 39 countries. We found
the growth was significantly accelerated as a function of a country-wise
measure of RM. This relationship was robust either with or without a set
of control variables, including demographic variables, reporting bias,
testing availability, and cultural dimensions of individualism and
government efficiency. Policy implications are discussed.
Accepted for COVID-19 fast-track publication in Psychological
Science