Participants and sampling

Using the platform Prolific (https://www.prolific.co/), we distributed surveys to a representative sample of adults from the United States (n = 915, M_age = 46 years, 75% White, 52% Women; see Supplementary Fig. ^S10 for geographic distribution). From September 2020 to October 2022, we asked participants to complete regular surveys of COVID-19 related attitudes and behaviors (for a visualization of all questions asked of this sample, see https://navigateobscurity.com/cooperation-conflict-lab/us-variable-lookup). This resulted in 18 unique time points of data collection during the pandemic. The first 12 time points were distributed monthly, while the remaining six time points were distributed every two months. Of the initial 915 participants, 634 returned to complete the survey at Time 2, while 347 participants continued through to Time 18 (see Supplementary Fig. ^S8 for attrition rates across all time points). However, this attrition did not substantially affect the demographic makeup of the sample through time (Supplementary Fig. ^S9). On average, participants were paid approximately $8 USD per hour for completing the surveys.