Socially responsible behavior is crucial for slowing the spread of infectious diseases. However, economic and epidemiological models of disease transmission abstract from prosocial motivations as a driver of behaviors that impact the health of others. In an incentivized study, we show that a large majority of people are very reluctant to put others at risk for their personal benefit. Moreover, this experimental measure of prosociality predicts health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic, measured in a separate and ostensibly unrelated study with the same people. Prosocial individuals are more likely to follow physical distancing guidelines, stay home when sick, and buy face masks. We also find that prosociality measured two years before the pandemic predicts health behaviors during the pandemic. Our findings indicate that prosociality is a stable, long-term predictor of policy-relevant behaviors, suggesting that the impact of policies on a population may depend on the degree of prosociality.

对社会负责的行为对于减缓传染病的传播至关重要。然而，疾病传播的经济和流行病学模型从亲社会动机中抽象出来，将其作为影响他人健康的行为的驱动因素。在一项激励研究中，我们表明绝大多数人都非常不愿意为了个人利益而将他人置于危险之中。此外，这种亲社会性的实验测量预测了 COVID-19 大流行期间的健康行为，这是在对同一个人进行的另一项表面上无关的研究中测量的。亲社会的人更有可能遵循保持身体距离的准则，生病时呆在家里，并购买口罩。我们还发现，在大流行前两年测量的亲社会性可以预测大流行期间的健康行为。