Jumping a queue, dodging a fare or making a phone call on the bus. Why is some behaviour deemed particularly annoying by some people while appearing relatively innocuous to others?
Why are the British particularly horrified by those who dodge their taxes compared with Filipinos and Americans, but more tolerant than the Germans and Chinese of those who dodge fares on public transport?
Scientists have found that different people — and different nationalities — have their own unique "moral taste buds" that affect how outraged and appalled they are by various forms of behaviour.
The researchers, from Uppsala, Mälardalen and Linköping universities in Sweden and the University of South Carolina in the United States, found there were different tastes in morality that could be offended, including concerns over fairness, loyalty, respect for authority, purity and the risk of harm.
They also found that their system could take a society's view on a profound issue to predict with an accuracy of more than 75 per cent that group's attitude to mundane behaviour, such as whether it is OK to sing on a bus, and vice-versa.
Some moral concerns are seen as quintessentially British. Queue-jumping is regularly cited as a particularly heinous social sin.
The study, published in the journal Interface, relied on questionnaires from the World Values Survey, from 2017 to 2022, which did not include queue-jumping among its examples of contentious behaviour.
It did find, however, that 88 per cent of Britons said cheating on ones taxes was never justifiable, much higher than the 52 per cent of people in the Philippines who said the same. It was also more than the 80 per cent of Americans who disapproved.
When it comes to public transport, however, 24 per cent of Britons thought it was sometimes justifiable to dodge a fare — double the 12 per cent of Germans and more than triple the 7 per cent of Chinese people who said the same.
To explain the variation between different nationalities, the study noted: "Social norms shape our daily lives, from rules about honesty and fairness to whether it is acceptable to laugh at a funeral.
"In analogy with how palates differ across cuisines, societies can be thought of as having different 'moral taste buds', that is, a greater sensitivity to certain moral concerns over others."
They said the moral tastes could be divided into two broad categories, those about "harm and fairness" that tend to affect individuals, and those about "loyalty, authority and purity", which are seen as having more society-wide implications.
Cultures that focus more strongly on the latter tend to "make harsher judgments of kissing on the sidewalk", while those that focus more on the former tend to "disapprove more strongly not only of parents beating children but also of people playing loud music in restaurants", the study found.