Guilt drives prosociality across 20 countries

Impersonal prosociality is considered a cornerstone of a thriving civic society, well-functioning institutions, and a growing economy. Previous research has documented substantial cross-societal variation in prosociality using tasks such as dictator games, where individuals allocate money between themselves and others. In such tasks, individuals typically receive full information about how decisions impact others and make decisions privately. Here, we propose that different societies rely on distinct mechanisms—guilt and internalized norms versus shame and external pressures—to support prosociality. We conducted a pre-registered experiment with 7,978 participants in 20 culturally diverse countries across five continents. We administered dictator games and experimentally manipulated guilt, by varying information about the consequences of participants’ decisions (full versus hidden), and shame, by varying observability (public versus private). Additionally, we measured the Importance of Guilt over Shame (IGS) at the individual and country level. We found robust evidence for guilt-driven prosociality around the world, such that prosociality increased substantially when individuals received information by default compared to when they could avoid it. Further, providing information led to a stronger increase in prosociality among individuals, though not countries, scoring higher on IGS. In contrast, making decisions observable by third parties had only small effects on prosocial choices. Our study provides a first comprehensive investigation of how guilt and shame influence prosocial decision-making, and uncovers both similarities and differences in mechanisms to promote prosociality across countries.