The Cultural Category of Cooperation: A Cultural Consensus Model Analysis for China and the United States

We provide evidence that cooperation is a cultural category, and that what it means to cooperate is culturally conditioned. We use a cultural consensus model analysis to assess which types of situations people categorize as cooperation and whether these categorizations are consistent within and across China and the United States. The data support revisiting the role of cognition in mediating cooperative behavior and the means by which culture shapes behavior. The data also support broadening research attention to multiple aspects of cooperation within the same theory, generating new research on reciprocity, and rethinking how key behaviors, such as competition and helping, relate to cooperation.