Evidence of cultural convergence through development for prosocial and antisocial behaviour

Facilitating prosocial behaviour and limiting antisocial behaviour is a fundamental part of maintaining a functional society, and many previous studies have focused on exploring cross-cultural variation within social behaviour. Contrasting hypotheses predict either the convergence or divergence of cultural differences following increased globalization. However, it remains unclear whether cultural differences in prosocial and antisocial behaviour align with the convergence or divergence hypothesis and whether they remain consistent during development. We tested this using a large set (above 27 000) of effect sizes from published dyadic comparisons between cultural groups, for prosocial and antisocial behaviour across multiple age categories (1-18 years old). Overall, we found larger effect sizes for prosocial than antisocial behaviour. Moreover, consistent with cultural convergence, cultural differences decreased with age for males and females. Our results show for the first time that globalization does not only affect adults but can impact social development early in life. We suggest this could reflect a convergence of behaviours and/or a convergence of norms, which further work could explore. We also identified several important biases in the published literature around human social behaviour.