Good News: Cooperation Among Strangers Has Increased for the Past 60 Years



Data from the American Psychological Association demonstrates that during the 1950s, cooperation between strangers has gradually increased in the United States, despite popular concerns that the social fabric is deteriorating.

According to lead researcher Yu Kou, Ph.D., a professor of social psychology at Beijing Normal University, "we were surprised by our findings that Americans became more cooperative over the last six decades because many people believe U.S. society is becoming less socially connected, less trustworthy, and less committed to the common good." Greater cooperation inside and across societies could aid in addressing issues like pandemic preparedness, climate change, and refugee crises.

The researchers examined 511 studies conducted in the US between 1956 and 2017 that included over 63,000 participants. These investigations featured experiments in which the cooperation of strangers was assessed. In the journal Psychological Bulletin, the study was just just published.

Over a 61-year period, the study found a tiny, progressive increase in collaboration, which the authors speculate may be connected to major changes in American society. Along with cooperation, there was an increase in urbanization, society wealth, income inequality, and the number of people living alone. Even while there is a correlation, the study cannot definitively demonstrate that those factors boosted cooperation.

Increased collaboration has been linked to both market competitiveness and economic growth, according to earlier studies. Individuals may be compelled to work with strangers as more people choose to live alone in cities, according to Paul Van Lange, Ph.D., a professor of social psychology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and research co-author.

According to Van Lange, it's feasible that people progressively learn to extend their collaboration beyond friends and acquaintances to strangers, which is necessary in more anonymous, metropolitan cultures. "The people of the United States have not become more individualistic,"

The research that were examined were conducted mostly in lab settings with college students as participants, so it's possible that the results don't accurately reflect real-world circumstances or American society as a whole. The researchers did point out that previous research had not discovered differences in cooperation levels between gender or ethnicity in the United States.

Some other societal variables, such as levels of trust in strangers, were not measured in the study. Prior studies have discovered an overall fall in trust over many years in the United States.

While Americans' collaboration has improved over time, the journal paper indicated that Americans' perceptions of other people's desire to collaborate have actually decreased.

Citation: "Did stranger cooperation drop in the United States? Social conundrums: A cross-temporal meta-analysis (1956–2017) published in Psychological Bulletin on July 18, 2022, by Yu Kou, Mingliang Yuan, Giuliana Spadaro, Shuxian Jin, Paul A. M. Van Lange, Daniel Balliet, and Junhui Wu.

By AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 

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