Universal norm psychology and the origins of societal diversity in prosocial behavior

• In Event: 2-032 - The foundations of social norm psychology

Integrative Statement

Human cooperation is unique in its scale, and also in the degree to which different societies practice different forms of prosocial behavior, cultural diversity which emerges as children reach middle childhood. This suggests that prosociality is partly motivated by culturally-variable social norms, which are acquired during development by a common human psychology for learning and following these norms. Social norms are central to numerous theoretical models of human sociality and development from disciplines ranging from psychology to evolutionary anthropology, but most empirical studies have not directly linked social norms to prosocial behavior and its development. Here, we demonstrate this link through cross-cultural field experiments that measure prosocial behavior in eight different societies, using the Dictator Game. We tested adults (N=255) and children (N=833) aged 4-17 in India (Pune), Tanzania (Hadza people), the United States (Phoenix), Ecuador (Shuar people), Germany (Berlin), urban Argentina (La Plata), rural Argentina (Wíchi people), and Vanuatu (Tanna). We show that societal variation in adults’ prosocial decisions is predicted by local norms about ‘correct’ prosocial behavior. We also demonstrate that children begin to spontaneously adhere to local prosocial norms in early adolescence, and that this occurs after children in all societies develop a uniform tendency to conform to novel (i.e., experimentally-provided) social norms. These results illustrate how the development of a universal norm psychology can lead to the emergence of societal variation in prosociality, and they provide empirical support for theoretical claims that human prosociality is highly dependent on cultural norms.

Authors

• Bailey House, York University
  Presenting Author

• Patricia Kanngiesser, Freie Universität Berlin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Clark Barrett, University of Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tanya Tanya, Simon Fraser University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Senay Cebioglu, Simon Fraser University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alyssa Crittenden, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alejandro Erut, University of Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sheina Lew-Levy, University of Cambridge
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carla Sebastian-Enesco, Universidad de La Rioja
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew Marcus Smith, University of Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Süheyla Yilmaz, Freie Universität Berlin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joan Silk, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author