Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 (N = 34,526), and test pre-registered hypotheses about how cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust relate to prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations (e.g., mandatory quarantine). We further tested whether cross-societal variation in institutions and ecologies theorized to impact cooperation were associated with prosocial COVID-19 responses, including institutional quality, religiosity, and historical prevalence of pathogens. We found substantial variation across societies in prosocial COVID-19 responses, stringency of policies, and support for behavioral regulations. However, we found no consistent evidence to support the idea that cross-societal variation in cooperation and trust among strangers is associated with these outcomes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. These results were replicated with another independent cross-cultural COVID-19 dataset (N = 112,136), and in both snowball and representative samples. We discuss implications of our results, including challenging the assumption that managing the COVID-19 pandemic across societies is best modeled as a public goods dilemma.

陌生人之间在提供公共物品方面的合作与信任之间的跨社会差异可能是了解社会如何管理COVID-19大流行的关键。我们公布3月份和2020年5之间（跨41个协会进行的一项调查ñ = 34,526），并检验有关合作与信任中跨社会差异如何与亲社会的COVID-19响应（例如，社会疏远），政策的严格性以及对行为法规的支持（例如，强制隔离）之间有关的预先注册的假设。我们进一步测试了理论上影响合作的机构间和生态间的跨社会差异是否与亲社会的COVID-19反应有关，包括机构质量，宗教信仰和病原体的历史流行。我们发现各个社会在亲社会COVID-19回应，政策严格性和对行为法规的支持方面存在很大差异。然而，我们没有找到一致的证据来支持这样的观点，即陌生人之间的合作与信任的跨社会变异与这些与COVID-19大流行相关的结果相关。将这些结果复制到另一个独立的跨文化COVID-19数据集（N  = 112,136），并且在雪球样本和代表性样本中均如此。我们讨论了研究结果的含义，包括质疑这样的假设，即最好地将跨社会管理COVID-19大流行建模为一种公共物品困境。