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.

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability—for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples.

Disease-causing parasites and pathogens play a pivotal role in intergroup behavior. Previous studies have suggested that the selection pressure posed by pathogen threat has resulted in in-group assortative sociality, including xenophobia and in-group favoritism. While the current literature has collated numerous studies on the former, strikingly, there has not been much research on the relationship between pathogen threat and in-group cooperation. Drawing upon prior studies on the function of the behavioral immune system (BIS), we argued that the BIS might facilitate cooperation with in-group members as a reactive behavioral immune response to pathogen threat. More specifically, we held that individuals might utilize cooperative behavior to ensure that they can receive social support when they have contracted an infectious disease. We reviewed existing findings pertaining to the potential role of the BIS in in-group cooperation and discussed directions for future studies.

Individuals sometimes prefer to anonymously donate money when they can publicly do so. In other words, they deliberately hide their costly prosocial behavior from a broad audience. While existing research has collated various evolutionary theories emphasizing the value of public prosocial behavior, it has not endeavored to address the preference for anonymous giving. The article discussed potential explanations for the preference and pointed to the importance of further scholarly discussion about the value and function of anonymous prosocial behavior.

Heyman and Ariely (2004) demonstrated that the expected effectiveness of soliciting help varied depending on the “market”, a money market represented by cash rewards versus a social market represented by goods as rewards. They showed that, as cash rewards increase, individuals expected others to be more willing to help, yet, when offering social goods as rewards such as candy, expected willingness to help was insensitive to rewards’ monetary worth. We conducted two pre-registered replication studies (total: N = 3302, MTurk/Prolific) of Study 1 in Heyman and Ariely (2004) and found support for one of their main claims that people are more sensitive to worth when the reward is cash than goods. However, the rewards’ monetary worth impacted expected willingness to help even in social markets, deviating from the original findings. Extensions further compared between-subject and within-subject designs, examined perceived affect (joy and regret), and added a new control condition. We concluded that higher compensation is generally perceived as better when soliciting help, yet more so for the money market cash rewards than for the social market goods rewards. All materials, data, and code are provided on https://osf.io/y9p7u/