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PublicationRestricted Access
Cross-cultural evidence that shame is a defense against reputational damage
2026-03-23 - Neto, Joana Sequeira
Because shame leads to evasions, aggression, and other behaviors that victims and third parties find undesirable, a prominent theory regards this emotion as maladaptive. By contrast, an alternative, adaptationist theory asks whether shame might benefit the actor. Indications that an individual now offers fewer benefits or imposes greater costs on others, if they reach others’ minds, lead the individual to be socially devalued: Others become less inclined to help and more inclined to harm her. Thus, an adaptationist theory views shame as a neurocognitive adaptation designed to minimize the leakage of reputation-damaging information and the cost of being devalued. Here, we report tests of two predictions derived from the adaptationist theory across six countries—the United States, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Japan, and China—and two cultural regions within the United States—Southern states (honor) and Northern states (nonhonor). First, failures that indicate reductions in abilities more highly valued by others will elicit more intense shame. Second, failures will trigger greater shame when they occur in public rather than in private. The data supported both predictions in all six countries and in both US cultural regions. The improbable fit between the severity of the devaluative threat and the intensity of shame suggests that this emotion is an adaptation. Further, the replication of these findings across regions that vary widely along the individualism–collectivism and honor–nonhonor dimensions suggests that shame is part of human nature rather than a cultural construction.
PublicationRestricted Access
The psychology of offensive and defensive intergroup violence: Preregistered insights from 58 countries
2026-03-24 - Neto, Joana Sequeira
Evolutionary theory and historical evidence suggest humans possess distinct psychological tendencies for defensive and offensive violence, which have insufficiently been considered in research. In a large-scale preregistered study across 58 countries (N = 18,128), we demonstrate that violent extremist intentions manifest along two distinct psychological phenomena: defensive extremism, motivated by protecting one’s group from (perceived) threats, and offensive extremism, driven by establishing group dominance. We show that these dimensions a) can be reliably differentiated across diverse cultural contexts, b) are distinctively associated with psychological dispositions, and c) systematically differentiate countries varying in macrolevel sociopolitical functioning and violence. Across nations, a two-factorial structure was observed that was invariant at the scalar level. Defensive extremist intentions were consistently higher than offensive extremism in 56 out of 58 countries, suggesting greater moral acceptance of protective violence. While psychopathy was positively related to both types of violent extremist intentions, those high in Machiavellianism and narcissism demonstrated particularly higher levels of defensive extremist intentions. By contrast, those scoring high on religious fundamentalism and social dominance orientation demonstrated particularly higher levels of offensive extremist intentions. Unexpectedly, liberal political group identification was associated with higher offensive but lower defensive extremist intentions. Crucially, offensive (but not defensive) intentions were associated with macrolevel societal dysfunction, including political terror and internal conflict. These findings establish that defensive and offensive violent extremist intentions represent two conceptually different forms of extremism across a large and diverse range of countries, with consequences for research and practice.
PublicationOpen Access