Universal norm psychology leads to societal diversity in prosocial behaviour and development

Recent studies have proposed that social norms play a key role in motivating human cooperation and in explaining the unique scale and cultural diversity of our prosociality. However, there have been few studies that directly link social norms to the form, development and variation in prosocial behav...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature human behaviour 2020-01, Vol.4 (1), p.36-44
Main Authors: House, Bailey R., Kanngiesser, Patricia, Barrett, H. Clark, Broesch, Tanya, Cebioglu, Senay, Crittenden, Alyssa N., Erut, Alejandro, Lew-Levy, Sheina, Sebastian-Enesco, Carla, Smith, Andrew Marcus, Yilmaz, Süheyla, Silk, Joan B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
4014/19/2471
4014/477/2811
Adult
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Child
Child Development
Childhood
Cooperation
Cross cultural studies
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Elementary school teachers
Experimental Psychology
Female
Humans
Life Sciences
Male
Microeconomics
Models, Psychological
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Neurosciences
Norms
Personality and Social Psychology
Prosocial behavior
Psychology
Responsiveness
Social Behavior
Social development
Social Norms
Social Perception
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent studies have proposed that social norms play a key role in motivating human cooperation and in explaining the unique scale and cultural diversity of our prosociality. However, there have been few studies that directly link social norms to the form, development and variation in prosocial behaviour across societies. In a cross-cultural study of eight diverse societies, we provide evidence that (1) the prosocial behaviour of adults is predicted by what other members of their society judge to be the correct social norm, (2) the responsiveness of children to novel social norms develops similarly across societies and (3) societally variable prosocial behaviour develops concurrently with the responsiveness of children to norms in middle childhood. These data support the view that the development of prosocial behaviour is shaped by a psychology for responding to normative information, which itself develops universally across societies. In a cross-cultural study of eight diverse societies, House et al. provide evidence that links societal variation in prosociality to the development of a universal psychology for responding to social norms.
ISSN:2397-3374
2397-3374
DOI:10.1038/s41562-019-0734-z