Judgment and Decision Making (Jul 2015)

It pays to be nice, but not really nice: Asymmetric reputations from prosociality across 7 countries

  • Nadav Klein,
  • Igor Grossmann,
  • Ayse K. Uskul,
  • Alexandra A. Kraus,
  • Nicholas Epley

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 4
pp. 355 – 364

Abstract

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Cultures differ in many important ways, but one trait appears to be universally valued: prosociality. For one's reputation, around the world, it pays to be nice to others. However, recent research with American participants finds that evaluations of prosocial actions are asymmetric---relatively selfish actions are evaluated according to the magnitude of selfishness but evaluations of relatively generous actions are less sensitive to magnitude. Extremely generous actions are judged roughly as positively as modestly generous actions, but extremely selfish actions are judged much more negatively than modestly selfish actions (Klein and Epley, 2014). Here we test whether this asymmetry in evaluations of prosociality is culture-specific. Across 7 countries, 1,240 participants evaluated actors giving various amounts of money to a stranger. Along with relatively minor cross-cultural differences in evaluations of generous actions, we find cross-cultural similarities in the asymmetry in evaluations of prosociality. We discuss implications for how reputational inferences can enable the cooperation necessary for successful societies.

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