Publication
National parochialism is ubiquitous across 42 nations around the world
National parochialism is the tendency to cooperate more with ingroup than outgroup members. Angelo Romano, Matthias Sutter, James Liu, Toshio Yamagishi & Daniel Balliet studied national parochialism across different nations and conclude in their publication in Nature Communications that it is a ubiquitous phenomenon.
- Author
- Angelo Romano, Matthias Sutter, James Liu, Toshio Yamagishi & Daniel Balliet
- Date
- 26 January 2023
- Links
- National parochialism is ubiquitous across 42 nations around the world
Cooperation within and across borders is of paramount importance for the provision of public goods. Parochialism – the tendency to cooperate more with ingroup than outgroup members – limits contributions to global public goods. National parochialism (i.e., greater cooperation among members of the same nation) could vary across nations and has been hypothesized to be associated with rule of law, exposure to world religions, relational mobility and pathogen stress.
Angelo Romano and colleagues conducted an experiment in participants from 42 nations (N = 18,411), and observed cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma with ingroup, outgroup, and unidentified partners. They conclude that national parochialism is a ubiquitous phenomenon: it is present to a similar degree across the studied nations, it is independent of cultural distance, and occurs both when decisions are private or public. These findings inform existing theories of parochialism and suggest it may be an obstacle to the provision of global public goods.