Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30201711›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018

Cross-cultural invariances in the architecture of shame.

Daniel Sznycer, Dimitris Xygalatas, Elizabeth Agey, Sarah Alami, Xiao-Fen An, Kristina I Ananyeva, Quentin D Atkinson, Bernardo R Broitman, Thomas J Conte, Carola Flores and 16 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
27citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Trial
  3. Article
  4. Cross-cultural evidence that shame is a defense against reputational damage.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  5. The Shuar Health and Life History Project: Overview at 20 Years and Introduction to the Special Issue.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026
    Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. The evolution of shame and its display.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022
    Review
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Moral responses to the COVID-19 crisis.Royal Society open science · 2021
    Article
  16. Article
  17. Review
  18. Structural Injustice and the Emotions.Res publica (Liverpool, England) · 2021
    Article
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

26 authors.

Daniel SznycerDepartment of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada; dsznycer2@gmail.com.ORCID 0000-0002-6510-3313
Dimitris XygalatasDepartment of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269.ORCID 0000-0003-1561-9327
Elizabeth AgeyDepartment of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3210.
Sarah AlamiDepartment of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3210.ORCID 0000-0001-8081-9638
Xiao-Fen AnSchool of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China.
Kristina I AnanyevaInstitute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 129366 Moscow, Russia.
Quentin D AtkinsonSchool of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand.
Bernardo R BroitmanCentro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas, Facultad de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad Católica del Norte, Coquimbo 1781681, Chile.ORCID 0000-0001-6582-3188
Thomas J ConteDepartment of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Carola FloresCentro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas, Facultad de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad Católica del Norte, Coquimbo 1781681, Chile.
Shintaro FukushimaSchool of Cultural and Creative Studies, Aoyama Gakuin University, 150-8366 Tokyo, Japan.
Hidefumi HitokotoFaculty of Humanities, Fukuoka University, Fukuoka 814-0180, Japan.
Alexander N KharitonovInstitute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 129366 Moscow, Russia.
Charity N OnyishiDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Nigeria, 41000 Nsukka, Nigeria.
Ike E OnyishiDepartment of Psychology, University of Nigeria, 41000 Nsukka, Nigeria.
Pedro P RomeroDepartment of Economics, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Pichincha 17-0901, Ecuador.
Joshua M SchrockDepartment of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.
J Josh SnodgrassDepartment of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.
Lawrence S SugiyamaDepartment of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.
Kosuke TakemuraFaculty of Economics, Shiga University, Shiga 522-8522, Japan.
Cathryn TownsendDepartment of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Jin-Ying ZhuangSchool of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China.
C Athena AktipisDepartment of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104.
Lee CronkDepartment of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901.
Leda CosmidesCenter for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660.
John ToobyCenter for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean

Indexed as

Cross-Cultural ComparisonShameCultureFemaleHumansMaleResidence CharacteristicsSocial Behaviorcognitioncooperationcultureemotionevolutionary psychology

Identifiers

PMID30201711
PMCPMC6166838

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.