Viral transmission is dependent on human behaviour. Slowing the transmission of COVID‐19 has required people globally to undertake significant and profound behavioural changes almost overnight – and continue to comply with these changes. How to reduce viral transmission is therefore as much a question of social psychology as it is of virology and epidemiology, and requires the careful deployment of all we know about the factors that influence collective solidarity and lasting behaviour change. This requires ongoing work and detailed empirical analysis, but it also necessitates an immediate response to articulate how the global effort to slow the spread of the virus can be informed by what we already know about social behaviour. The contributions to this special section therefore represent an initial endeavour to apply the lessons of social psychological theory and research to the pandemic, in the hope that these insights can directly inform public policy, as well as individual and collective behaviour.

The considered application of pertinent and rigorous social psychological theory and research to the pandemic is particularly important because the responses of many governments appear at times to have been informed by flawed psychological assumptions based around notions of panic, behavioural fatigue, and psychological frailty (Drury, Reicher, & Stott, 2020). By contrast, as the contributions to the special section make clear, public reactions to the pandemic have been contingent on trust, values, leadership, perceptions of personal and collective efficacy, collective identity, and social norms (the latter of which can be both helpful and unhelpful) (see Van Bavel et al., 2020; for a review).

病毒传播取决于人类行为。放慢COVID-19的传播速度，要求全球各地的人们几乎在一夜之间做出重大而深刻的行为改变，并继续遵守这些改变。因此，如何减少病毒传播既是社会心理学的问题，也是病毒学和流行病学的问题，并且需要我们对影响集体团结和持久行为改变的因素的所有了解进行认真部署。这需要进行中的工作和详细的经验分析，但也需要立即做出反应，以阐明如何通过我们对社会行为的了解来了解全球减缓病毒传播的努力。

考虑到将相关的严格的社会心理学理论和研究应用于大流行病尤其重要，因为许多政府的反应有时似乎是基于基于恐慌，行为疲劳和心理虚弱等概念的错误的心理假设所提供的信息（Drury， Reicher和Stott，2020年）。与此相反，正如对特别部分的贡献所表明的那样，公众对这一大流行病的反应取决于信任，价值观，领导才能，对个人和集体效能的看法，集体认同和社会规范（后者可能对我们有所帮助）。 （无助）（请参阅Van Bavel等，2020；进行回顾）。