文章基本信息

标题：Increase of Collectivistic Expression in China During the COVID-19 Outbreak: An Empirical Study on Online Social Networks
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作者：Han, Nuo ; Ren, Xiaopeng ; Wu, Peijing 等
期刊名称：Frontiers in Psychology
电子版ISSN：1664-1078
出版年度：2021
卷号：12
页码：1165
DOI：10.3389/fpsyg.2021.632204
出版社：Frontiers Media
摘要：The pathogen-prevalence hypothesis postulates that collectivism would be strengthened in the long term in tandem with recurrent attacks of infectious diseases. However, it is unclear whether a one-time pathogen epidemic would elevate collectivism. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the widespread prevalence of online social networks have provided researchers an opportunity to explore this issue. This study sampled and analyzed the posts of 126,165 active users on Weibo, a leading Chinese online social network. It used independent-sample t-tests to examine whether COVID-19 had an impact on Chinese collectivistic value-related behaviors by comparing the usage frequency of personal pronouns, group-related words, and relationship-related words before and after the outbreak. Overall, most collectivist words exhibited a significant upward trend after the outbreak. In turn, this tendency pointed to a rising sense of collectivism (versus individualism). Hence, this study confirmed the pathogen-prevalence hypothesis in real settings, finding that an outbreak of an infectious disease such as COVID-19 could exert an impact on collectivism, and may deliver a theoretical basis for psychological protection against the threat of COVID-19. However, further evaluation is required to ascertain whether this trend is universal or culture-specific.
关键词：collectivism; pathogen-prevalence hypothesis; online social networks; big data; COVID-19