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Guilt drives prosocial behavior across countries| title | Guilt drives prosocial behavior across countries |
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| start_date | 2025/03/28 |
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| schedule | 14h-16h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle D30 |
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| summary | Influential theoretical perspectives have proposed that impersonal prosociality varies substantially across societies. In this talk, I will investigate the idea that different societies rely on distinct mechanisms—guilt and internalized norms versus shame and external pressures—to support prosociality. To test this idea, we conducted a pre-registered experiment with 7,978 participants across 20 culturally diverse countries. Previous cross-societal research on prosociality relied on decision-making tasks where (1) individuals could allocate money between themselves and strangers, (2) received full information about how their decisions impact others, and (3) made their decisions privately. To examine how guilt and shame affect prosociality across countries, we experimentally induced guilt by varying information about the consequences of participants’ decisions (full versus hidden), and shame by varying observability (public versus private). Additionally, we measured guilt- and shame-proneness at the individual and country levels. We found robust evidence for guilt-driven prosociality across all countries, such that prosociality increased substantially when participants had full information about the consequences of their actions. Further, guilt-prone (versus shame-prone) individuals were more responsive to receiving full information. In contrast, making participants’ decisions observable by third parties did not influence prosociality. This study provides a first comprehensive investigation of how guilt and shame affect prosociality around the world. |
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| responsibles | NC |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2025/03/20 15:22 UTC |
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