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Does uncertainty avoidance keep charity away? comparative research between charitable behavior and 79 national cultures

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Culture and Brain

Abstract

Prosocial behavior and the motivation behind it have been dominant topic and core concern of numerous studies across array of different social science disciplines. Nevertheless, the prevailing research approach is still mainly focused on prosocial behavior observed in terms of situational and individual aspects and less in terms of cultural and group tendencies and orientations. This research tried to explain prosocial behavior among 79 different countries focusing on cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance. According to Hofstede, uncertainty avoidance (UAI) reflects how society deals with the uncertainty that future brings and with the level of anxiety brought by the outcome of this ambiguity. The amount to which the participants of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unfamiliar situations and shape views and institutions to avoid them are reflected in UAI score. Since charity is closely intertwined with economic, social and personal resources which in turn are closely linked with uncertainty avoidance, we successfully postulated how lower uncertainty avoidance is related with higher prosocial behavior which we ultimately supported by our research results.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Science and Technology Service Network Initiative of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KFJ-EW-STS-0880) and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-EW-J-8).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 16 Lincui Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, China

    Ivana Stojcic, Lu Kewen & Ren Xiaopeng

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Stojcic, I., Kewen, L. & Xiaopeng, R. Does uncertainty avoidance keep charity away? comparative research between charitable behavior and 79 national cultures. Cult. Brain 4, 1–20 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40167-016-0033-8

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