The Evaluation of Harm and Purity Transgressions in Africans: A Paradigmatic Replication of Rottman and Young (2019)

Abstract

Improving the generalizability of psychology findings to a culture requires sampling participants in that culture. Yet psychology studies rarely sample from African populations, even though it represents 17% of the overall world population. This study aimed to conduct an African-led replication study to test whether Rottman and Young’s “mere-trace” hypothesis of moral reasoning (that people are more sensitive to the dosage of harm-based transgressions than purity transgressions) extends to several African communities. We used a training method developed by the Collaborative Replication and Education Project (CREP) to support and train 23 African collaborators. During this process, we conducted a paradigmatic replication of Rottman’s and Young’s test of the mere trace hypothesis in Egypt, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania. [We did not find/We found] evidence for the main interaction effect (bdomain x dose = xxx) of transgression severity on the moral wrongness judgment of impure and harmful violations. [We did/ However, we did not] replicate Rottman and Young's findings among Africans. This project helped improve the research capacity of our participating African sites and will support other researchers in collaborating with African scholars.