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  • Social norms vary in strength across societies but prior research has not studied how this cultural variation depends on the behavior being constrained by the norm. Here we present the modern justifications theory, which centers on the different types of concerns that justify norms and how the relevance of these concerns differs between societies. Societies with more modern values are predicted to be more permissive toward behaviors that elicit concerns about religion and indecency, while simultaneously having stronger norms against behaviors that elicit harm and fairness concerns. These predictions differ from those of the well-known cultural tightness-looseness theory. We test these competing theories by linking available data on societies’ modern values and tightness with cross-cultural data on multiple norms in three key domains—cooperation, morality, and everyday behavior—and with new cross-cultural data on the justifications of these norms. We find that norm strength in every domain is better explained by modern values than by tightness. Importantly, the modernity gradient in norm strength varies across behaviors as predicted by modern justifications theory: societies with more modern values have stronger norms for certain behaviors and weaker norms for other behaviors and, in a preregistered study, we show that this variation in the modernity gradients of norms is explained by the extent to which the behavior elicits concerns about harm and fairness (rather than decency and religion). This approach thus yields new insights into observed cultural differences in social norms. (xsd:string)
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  • (EVS) (xsd:string)
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  • EVS-Bibliography (xsd:string)
?:dateModified
  • 2024 (xsd:gyear)
?:datePublished
  • 2024 (xsd:gyear)
?:doi
  • 10.2139/ssrn.4796292 ()
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  • 64 (xsd:string)
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  • english (xsd:string)
?:issn
  • 1556-5068 ()
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  • The Modern Justifications Theory of How Social Norms Vary Across Behaviors and Societies (xsd:string)
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  • techreport (xsd:string)
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  • 64, 2024 (xsd:string)
  • Bibsonomy (xsd:string)
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  • European Values Study (EVS) (xsd:string)
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  • 2024 (xsd:string)
  • EVS (xsd:string)
  • EVS_input2000 (xsd:string)
  • EVS_pro (xsd:string)
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  • english (xsd:string)
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  • techreport (xsd:string)
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  • 64 (xsd:string)
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