Social interactions make up our everyday conversations and communications. UCLA Assistant Professor of Sociology Dr. Giovanni Rossi has studied these interactions and their prevalence in cultures around the globe. As part of an international team of researchers, Dr. Rossi’s involvement began with a project on cooperation and compliance with small requests (e.g., to pass a utensil). Examining video data collected in Australia, Ecuador, Ghana, Italy, Laos, Poland, Russia, Argentina, the United Kingdom and the United States, the study found that people around the world almost always help each other when prompted with small requests. The study found strong commonalities in everyday cooperation across various cultures, providing insights into this fundamental aspect of human behavior.

 

More recently, Dr. Rossi has embarked on another study that is once again analyzing social interactions in geographically and culturally diverse populations. Building on his previous work on small requests, this new study focuses on big requests (e.g., borrowing a large sum of money). The study uses video data from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Amazon, Southeast Asia, and more regions. Each culture provides a different context within which to study these requests. A big request in one community may be asking for a ride to the airport, while in another it may be asking to help move cattle. At the same time, the research is revealing that people across various cultures tend to approach big requests similarly: without preliminaries (i.e., directly) and with optimistic rather than pessimistic language. This is the case even though the chances of compliance are lower for big requests than for small ones. Dr. Rossi’s team, which includes UCLA Sociology colleagues Dr. Tanya Stivers and Andrew Chalfoun, will also explore differences in the way that big requests are responded to and negotiated across cultures.