Guilt drives prosociality across 20 countries

Catherine Molho, Ivan Soraperra, Jonathan Schulz and Shaul Shalvi
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Catherine Molho: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
Ivan Soraperra: UvA - Universiteit van Amsterdam = University of Amsterdam, Max Planck Institute for Human Development - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Jonathan Schulz: George Mason University [Fairfax]
Shaul Shalvi: UvA - Universiteit van Amsterdam = University of Amsterdam

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Abstract: Impersonal prosociality is considered a cornerstone of thriving civic societies and well-functioning institutions. Previous research has documented cross-societal variation in prosociality using monetary allocation tasks such as dictator games. Here we examined whether different societies may rely on distinct mechanisms—guilt and internalized norms versus shame and external reputation—to promote prosociality. We conducted a preregistered experiment with 7,978 participants across 20 culturally diverse countries. In dictator games, we manipulated guilt by varying information about the consequences of participants' decisions, and shame by varying observability. We also used individual- and country-level measures of the importance of guilt over shame. We found robust evidence for guilt-driven prosociality and wilful ignorance across countries. Prosociality was higher when individuals received information than when they could avoid it. Furthermore, more guilt-prone individuals (but not countries) were more responsive to information. In contrast, observability by strangers had negligible effects on prosociality. Our findings highlight the importance of providing information about the negative consequences of individuals' choices to encourage prosocial behaviour across cultural contexts.

Keywords: Human behaviour; Economics; Cultural evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Nature Human Behaviour, 2025, 9 (10), pp.2199-2200. ⟨10.1038/s41562-025-02286-3⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05361408

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02286-3

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