Anger and disgust shape judgments of social sanctions across cultures, especially in high individual autonomy societies.

When someone violates a social norm, others may think that some sanction would be appropriate. We examine how the experience of emotions like anger and disgust relate to the judged appropriateness of sanctions, in a pre-registered analysis of data from a large-scale study in 56 societies. Across the world, we find that individuals who experience anger and disgust over a norm violation are more likely to endorse confrontation, ostracism and, to a smaller extent, gossip. Moreover, we find that the experience of anger is consistently the strongest predictor of judgments of confrontation, compared to other emotions. Although the link between state-based emotions and judgments may seem universal, its strength varies across countries. Aligned with theoretical predictions, this link is stronger in societies, and among individuals, that place higher value on individual autonomy. Thus, autonomy values may increase the role that emotions play in guiding judgments of social sanctions.

Changes in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries.

The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, using survey data from 30,431 respondents in 43 countries recorded before and in the early stages following the emergence of COVID-19. Using variation in disease intensity, we shed light on the mechanisms predicting changes in social norm measures. We find evidence that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased while tightness and punishing frequency slightly decreased but observe no evidence for a robust change in most other norms. Thus, at least in the short term, our findings suggest that cultures are largely stable to pandemic threats except in those norms, hand washing in this case, that are perceived to be directly relevant to dealing with the collective threat.

Perceptions of the appropriate response to norm violation in 57 societies.

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.

Do teachers know their students? Examining teacher attunement in secondary schools.

Using survey data from 457 Italian sixth grade secondary school students (M age = 11.9, SD = 0.7, 46% girls) and 58 of their teachers (M age = 45.7, SD = 9.4, 92.8% female) this study examined the extent to which secondary school teachers were attuned to their students. More specifically, we investigated the extent to which teachers were aware of which students were highly liked, disliked, prosocial, aggressive, or engaged in risky behavior. For each of these five dimensions, teacher attunement was measured by comparing teacher's nominations to the proportion of received peer nominations per student. Then, a general teacher attunement score was constructed by calculating the mean of these five scores. Descriptive analyses showed a moderate teacher attunement, which was highest for prosocial behavior and lowest for risk behavior. It was investigated whether certain teachers had a higher attunement than others. Our analyses showed that teacher attunement was positively associated with the amount of time teachers spent with their students and with their experience as a teacher. Furthermore, attunement was negatively associated with classroom size.

Peer and self-reported victimization: Do non-victimized students give victimization nominations to classmates who are self-reported victims?

Using data from 2413 Dutch first-year secondary school students (M age=13.27, SD age=0.51, 49.0% boys), this study investigated as to what extent students who according to their self-reports had not been victimized (referred to as reporters) gave victimization nominations to classmates who according to their self-reports had been victimized (referred to as receivers). Using a dyadic approach, characteristics of the reporter-receiver dyad (i.e., gender similarity) and of the reporter (i.e., reporters' behavior during bullying episodes) that were possibly associated with reporter-receiver agreement were investigated. Descriptive analyses suggested that numerous students who were self-reported victims were not perceived as victimized by their non-victimized classmates. Three-level logistic regression models (reporter-receiver dyads nested in reporters within classrooms) demonstrated greater reporter-receiver agreement in same-gender dyads, especially when the reporter and the receiver were boys. Furthermore, reporters who behaved as outsiders during bullying episodes (i.e., reporters who actively shied away from the bullying) were less likely to agree on the receiver's self-reported victimization, and in contrast, reporters who behaved as defenders (i.e., reporters who helped and supported victims) were more likely to agree on the victimization. Moreover, the results demonstrated that reporters gave fewer victimization nominations to receivers who reported they had been victimized sometimes than to receivers who reported they had been victimized often/very often. Finally, this study suggested that reporter-receiver agreement may not only depend on characteristics of the reporter-receiver dyad and of the reporter, but on classroom characteristics as well (e.g., the number of students in the classroom).