# Honour, competition and cooperation across 13 societies

## TL;DR

This study explores how honor values influence competition and cooperation across 13 societies, showing that societal norms around honor can increase both behaviors.

## Contribution

The study reveals how different forms of honor values uniquely predict competition and cooperation behaviors across diverse societies.

## Key findings

- Perceived normative honor values are linked to increased competition and cooperation at societal and individual levels.
- Endorsing defense of family reputation is associated with stronger coordination efforts.
- Self-promotion and retaliation values are linked to weaker coordination.

## Abstract

Effectively addressing societal challenges often requires unrelated individuals to reduce conflict and successfully coordinate actions. The cultural logic of ‘honour’ is frequently studied in relation to conflict, but its role in competition and cooperation remains underexplored. The current study investigates how perceived normative and personally endorsed honour values predict competition and cooperation behaviours. In an online experiment testing preregistered hypotheses, 3,371 participants from 13 societies made incentivized competition decisions in a contest game and cooperation decisions for coordination in a step-level public goods game. Perceived normative honour values were associated with greater competition and greater cooperation at both societal and individual levels. Personally endorsing values tied to defence of family reputation was associated with greater coordinative efforts, whereas endorsing self-promotion and retaliation was associated with weaker engagement in coordination. These findings highlight the role of honour as a cultural logic (in its different forms) in shaping competition and cooperation across societies.

This online study with 3,371 participants from 13 societies found that perceived societal honour norms predicted both greater competition and greater cooperation at both societal and individual levels.