Rachel Sparkman, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology graduating in 2024, recently co-authored a paper titled “Assessing the role of collectivism and individualism on COVID-19 beliefs and behaviors in the Southeastern United States” alongside other FSU faculty, including lead author Jayur Madhusudan Mehta, Ph.D.; Choeeta Chakrabarti, Ph.D.; Jessica De Leon, Ph.D.; Patricia Homan, Ph.D., and graduate student Tara Skipton. The following summary was written by FSU student Maya Topiwala (B.S. International Affairs ‘23).
Rachel Sparkman, Ph.D. candidate, worked with FSU faculty, including Associate Professor of Sociology Patricia Homan, Ph.D., on the paper “Assessing the role of collectivism and individualism on COVID-19 beliefs and behaviors in the Southeastern United States,” finding that people’s perceptions about COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy are linked to cultural behaviors of individualism and collectivism.

The study focuses on perceptions of the pandemic, behaviors tied to safety and community, and how these practices were tied to beliefs of individualism and collectivism.
“Given that the United States typically emphasizes individualistic behaviors, we wanted to explore individualist and collectivist responses during a pandemic, situated within a global health crisis,” Sparkman said. “Could more lives be saved in the future if more people adopted collectivist attitudes, resulting in more mask-wearing and concern for other people? Probably.”
The study used a collective orientation scale, evaluating it against demographic data and behavioral responses elicited from the study’s population to understand the relationships between individualism, collectivism, and social responses to the COVID-19 pandemic at FSU.
A collective orientation scale is a multi-item questionnaire that captures attitudes regarding individuals’ relationships to those around them, allowing researchers to group these behaviors into individualist or collectivist behaviors. For example, if a respondent strongly agreed with the statement “The well-being of my coworkers is important to me,” they would score higher on collectivism, whereas strong agreement with a statement such as “I’d rather depend on myself than others” would show a more individualist orientation.
The team’s research consisted of a two-pronged approach: 1) qualitative semi-structured interviews and 2) a quantitative questionnaire.
Overall, the researchers found that collectivist-orientated people were associated with a greater likelihood of wearing masks consistently, greater concern for infecting others, and higher levels of trust in medical professionals for behavioral guidelines surrounding the pandemic. However, they were also associated with severe interruptions of one’s social life caused by the pandemic. The authors found that these individualist/collectivist ideals were a strong predictor of COVID-19 beliefs and behaviors across political lines.
Based on their findings, the authors encourage future research on the impact that perceptions of individualism and collectivism have on public health behaviors, vaccine use, regard for others’ health, and trust in doctors.
Citation (APA):
Mehta JM, Chakrabarti C, De Leon J, Homan P, Skipton T, Sparkman R (2023) Assessing the role of collectivism and individualism on COVID-19 beliefs and behaviors in the Southeastern United States. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0278929. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278929