Cooperation and acting for the greater good during the COVID-19 pandemic

Cooperation is essential to overcome global pandemics and other health crises, as many preventative measures require people to bear a personal cost to benefit other people or society as a whole. Wearing a face mask, for example, protects other people more than it protects oneself. In this essay, we discuss several mechanisms that are known to promote cooperation in economic games and real-world scenarios, with a special focus on message-based interventions that might be helpful to promote social distancing, mask wearing, physical hygiene, vaccine uptake, and information seeking. Lessons learned and future research ideas are offered.