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Although the isolated threat of disease often motivates people to avoid others, people need the help and cooperation of others to protect themselves against pandemic disease threats. Therefore, the fear of contracting a highly contagious virus like COVID-19 should motivate people to believe that they can in fact count on the help and cooperation of others for protection. Trusting in others provides the basis to anticipate their cooperation. Therefore, we expected a greater daily threat of contracting COVID-19 to motivate people to trust more in others, providing needed assurance that others would keep them safe from harm. We obtained 4 daily diary samples involving 2794 participants who provided in excess of 18,000 daily observations within the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each day, we tracked (1) disease threat, captured daily by personal concerns about COVID-19 and infection totals in the …