Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, we find the country variation in the appropriateness of sanctions to be consistent across different norm violations but not across different sanctions. Specifically, in those countries where use of physical confrontation and social ostracism is rated as less appropriate, gossip is rated as more appropriate.

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Prosocial behavior is paradoxical because it often entails a cost to one’s own welfare to benefit others. Theoretical models suggest that prosociality is driven by several forms of reciprocity. Although we know a great deal about how each of these forms operates in isolation, they are rarely isolated in the real world. Rather, the topological features of human social networks are such that people are often confronted with multiple types of reciprocity simultaneously. Does our current understanding of human prosociality break down if we account for the fact that the various forms of reciprocity tend to co-occur in nature? Results of a large experiment show that each basis of human reciprocity is remarkably robust to the presence of other bases. This lends strong support to existing models of prosociality and puts theory and research on firmer ground in explaining the high levels of prosociality observed in human social networks.

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