What is it about?
Perceiving society as “breaking down” reduces people’s willingness to help. When individuals feel leaders are failing or moral norms are eroding, they feel less responsible and less effective. This effect is consistent across cultures, but moral breakdown matters more in collectivistic contexts.
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Photo by Elena Rabkina on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This research shows that broader societal perceptions can quietly undermine generosity. When people feel society is unstable, they withdraw from helping. Understanding this can help policymakers and organizations design messages that restore responsibility and trust to sustain prosocial behavior.
Perspectives
Working on this project with Professor Lan Xia has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I feel very fortunate to collaborate with someone whose insights and perspective I deeply respect, and the process itself has been both intellectually engaging and personally meaningful. I am also truly grateful to the editors and reviewers, whose thoughtful and constructive feedback significantly improved the work. Their guidance challenged us to sharpen our thinking and strengthened the final paper in important ways. Overall, this has been a deeply positive and enriching journey, and I feel very lucky to have been part of it.
Fei Gao
Bentley University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: When society feels broken: How perceptions of anomie shape donation tendencies across cultures, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2026, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2026.104921.
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