In all three countries, the higher the level of shame and guilt people felt over falling ill, the less likely they were to play it safe and to report their COVID-19 status. They were also asked to rate how often they obey guidelines like social distancing and how likely they’d be to tell friends, acquaintances and health authorities if they tested positive. The subjects were asked to rate how ashamed or guilty they’d feel if they contracted COVID-19. judged the most individualistic, South Korea the most group-oriented and Italy in between. They assembled nearly 1,900 people from the U.S., Italy and South Korea-choosing those countries on the basis of their differing sense of the collective culture, with the U.S. Last month, Travaglino and Chanki Moon, an assistant professor of psychology at Leeds Beckett University, published a paper in Frontiers in Psychology that threw the ineffectiveness of shaming into relief.
