Crossing Cultures
People in historically rice-farming areas are less happy and socially compare more than people in wheat-farming areas
Cheol-Sung Lee, Thomas Talhelm & Xiawei Dong
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using two nationally representative surveys, we find that people in China's historically rice-farming areas are less happy than people in wheat areas. This is a puzzle because the rice area is more interdependent, and relationships are an important predictor of happiness. We explore how the interdependence of historical rice farming may have paradoxically undermined happiness by creating more social comparison than wheat farming. We build a framework in which rice farming leads to social comparison, which makes people unhappy (especially people who are worse off). If people in rice areas socially compare more, then people's happiness in rice areas should be more closely related to markers of social status like income. In two studies, national survey data show that income, self-reported social status, and occupational status predict people's happiness twice as strongly in rice areas than wheat areas. In Study 3, we use a unique natural experiment comparing two nearby state farms that effectively randomly assigned people to farm rice or wheat. The rice farmers socially compare more, and farmers who socially compare more are less happy. If interdependence breeds social comparison and erodes happiness, it could help explain the paradox of why the interdependent cultures of East Asia are less happy than similarly wealthy cultures.
Culture, children and couple gender inequality
Jonas Jessen
European Economic Review, November 2022
Abstract:
This paper examines how culture impacts within-couple gender inequality. Exploiting the setting of Germany's division and reunification, I compare child penalties of East Germans who were socialised in a more gender egalitarian culture to West Germans socialised in a gender-traditional culture. Using a household panel, I show that the long-run child penalty on the female income share is 23.9 percentage points for West German couples, compared to 12.9 for East German couples. The arrival of children also leads to a greater increase in the female share of housework and child care for West Germans. I add to the main findings by using time-use diary data from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and reunified Germany, which provides a rare insight into gender inequality in the GDR and allows me to compare the effect of having children in the GDR to the effects in East and West Germany after reunification. Lastly, I show that attitudes towards maternal employment are more egalitarian among East Germans, but that the arrival of children leads to more traditional attitudes for both East and West Germans. The findings confirm that socialisation has a strong impact on child penalties and that family policies may have an impact on gender inequality through social learning in the long run.
Does language rule perception? Testing a radical view of linguistic relativity
Diane Baier et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
To investigate whether language rules the visual features that can be discriminated (a radical assumption of linguistic relativity), we examined crosslinguistic differences between native Korean and German speakers during liminal perception of a target disk that was difficult to perceive because its visibility suffered from masking by a ring that followed and enclosed the target disk (metacontrast-masking). Target-mask fit varied, with half of the masks tightly and the other half loosely encircling the targets. In Korean, such tight versus loose spatial relations are semantically distinguished and thus highly practiced, whereas in German, they are collapsed within a single semantic category, thus are not distinguished by language. We expected higher sensitivity and greater attention to varying spatial target-mask distances in Korean than in German speakers. This was confirmed in Experiment 1, where Korean speakers consistently outperformed German speakers in discriminating liminal metacontrast-masked stimuli. To ensure that this effect was not attributable to generic differences in attention capture or by language-independent differences between participant groups, we investigated stimulus-driven attention capture by color singletons and conducted a control experiment using object-substitution masking, where tightness of fit was not manipulated. We found no differences between Korean and German speakers regarding stimulus-driven attention capture or perceptual sensitivity. This was confirmed in Experiment 3, where we manipulated types of masking within participants. In addition, we validated the tightness-of-fit manipulation in a language-related task (Experiment 4). Overall, our results are consistent with linguistic relativity, namely its assumed generalized language influences in nonlinguistic perceptual tasks.
The mutual constitution of culture and psyche: The bidirectional relationship between individuals' perceived control and cultural tightness-looseness
Anyi Ma et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to the theory of mutual constitution of culture and psyche, just as culture shapes people, individuals' psychological states can influence culture. We build on compensatory control theory, which suggests that low personal control can lead people to prefer societal systems that impose order, to examine the mutual constitution of personal control and cultural tightness. Specifically, we tested whether individuals' lack of personal control increases their preference for tighter cultures as a means of restoring order and predictability, and whether tighter cultures in turn reduce people's feelings of personal control. Seven studies (five preregistered) with participants from the United States, Singapore, and China examine this cycle of mutual constitution. Specifically, documenting the correlational link between person and culture, we found that Americans lower on personal control preferred to live in tighter states (Study 1). Chinese employees lower on personal control also desired more structure and preferred a tighter organizational culture (Study 2). Employing an experimental causal chain design, Studies 3-5 provided causal evidence for our claim that lack of control increases desire for tighter cultures via the need for structure. Finally, tracing the link back from culture to person, Studies 6a and 6b found that whereas tighter cultures decreased perceptions of individual personal control, they increased people's sense of collective control. Overall, the findings document the process of mutual constitution of culture and psyche: lack of personal control leads people to seek more structured, tighter cultures, and that tighter cultures, in turn, decrease people's sense of personal control but increase their sense of collective control.
C-H-E-A-T: Wordle Cheating Is Related to Religiosity and Cultural Tightness
Alexandra Wormley & Adam Cohen
Perspectives on Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Wordle is a daily, online brainteaser. The widespread popularity of the game in the early months of 2022 has also led to widespread cheating. Here, we use data from Google Trends and Twitter to explore correlates of cheating on Wordle. We find that cheating behavior is negatively related to religiosity and cultural tightness. Although this is a benign example of cheating behavior, we discuss how popular trends can be used as case studies of group-level behavior.
Cultural Variations in Perceived Partner Responsiveness: The Role of Self-Consistency
Hyewon Choi & Shigehiro Oishi
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research has shown that perceived partner responsiveness (PPR) is a key process contributing to individual and relational outcomes and identified dispositional, relational, and situational factors that can influence it. However, little is known about how cultural factors play a role in the process of PPR. In Studies 1 (n = 4,041) and 2 (n = 414), we examined whether the degree of PPR differs across cultures by comparing European Americans and East Asians. We found that East Asians are less likely to experience perceived responsiveness from others than European Americans (Cohen's d = 1.11-1.25 for Study 1 and Cohen's d = 0.23 for Study 2). Furthermore, we found that self-consistency explained the cultural difference in PPR, indicating that East Asians underperceived partner responsiveness compared with European Americans because they behave less consistently across social situations. We conclude by highlighting the importance of exploring the process of PPR from a cultural perspective.
From virility to virtue: The psychology of apology in honor cultures
Ying Lin et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 October 2022
Abstract:
In honor cultures, relatively minor disputes can escalate, making numerous forms of aggression widespread. We find evidence that honor cultures' focus on virility impedes a key conflict de-escalation strategy-apology-that can be successfully promoted through a shift in mindset. Across five studies using mixed methods (text analysis of congressional speeches, a cross-cultural comparison, surveys, and experiments), people from honor societies (e.g., Turkey and US honor states), people who endorse honor values, and people who imagine living in a society with strong honor norms are less willing to apologize for their transgressions (studies 1-4). This apology reluctance is driven by concerns about reputation in honor cultures. Notably, honor is achieved not only by upholding strength and reputation (virility) but also through moral integrity (virtue). The dual focus of honor suggests a potential mechanism for promoting apologies: shifting the focus of honor from reputation to moral integrity. Indeed, we find that such a shift led people in honor cultures to perceive apologizing more positively and apologize more (study 5). By identifying a barrier to apologizing in honor cultures and illustrating ways to overcome it, our research provides insights for deploying culturally intelligent conflict-management strategies in such contexts.
Masks as a moral symbol: Masks reduce wearers' deviant behavior in China during COVID-19
Jackson Lu et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 October 2022
Abstract:
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, mask wearing has become a global phenomenon. How do masks influence wearers' behavior in everyday life? We examine the effect of masks on wearers' deviant behavior in China, where mask wearing is mostly a public-health issue rather than a political issue. Drawing on behavioral ethics research, we test two competing hypotheses: (a) masks disinhibit wearers' deviant behavior by increasing their sense of anonymity and (b) masks are a moral symbol that reduces wearers' deviant behavior by heightening their moral awareness. The latter hypothesis was consistently supported by 10 studies (including direct replications) using mixed methods (e.g., traffic camera recording analysis, observational field studies, experiments, and natural field experiment) and different measures of deviant behavior (e.g., running a red light, bike parking in no-parking zones, cheating for money, and deviant behavior in the library). Our research (n = 68,243) is among the first to uncover the psychological and behavioral consequences of mask wearing beyond its health benefits.
Children infer the behavioral contexts of unfamiliar foreign songs
Courtney Hilton et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Music commonly appears in behavioral contexts in which it can be seen as playing a functional role, as when a parent sings a lullaby with the goal of soothing a baby. Humans readily make inferences, based on the sounds they hear, regarding the behavioral contexts associated with music. These inferences tend to be accurate, even if the songs are in foreign languages or unfamiliar musical idioms; upon hearing a Blackfoot lullaby, a Korean listener with no experience of Blackfoot music, language, or broader culture is far more likely to judge the music's function as "used to soothe a baby" than "used for dancing". Are such inferences shaped by musical exposure or does the human mind naturally detect links between musical form and function of these kinds? Children's developing experience of music provides a clear test of this question. We studied musical inferences in a large sample of children recruited online (N = 5,033), who heard dance, lullaby, and healing songs from 70 world cultures and who were tasked with guessing the original behavioral context in which each was performed. Children reliably inferred the original behavioral contexts with only minimal improvement in performance from the youngest (age 4) to the oldest (age 16), providing little evidence for an effect of experience. Children's inferences tightly correlated with those of adults for the same songs, as collected from a similar online experiment (N = 98,150). Moreover, similar acoustical features were predictive of the inferences of both samples. These findings suggest that accurate inferences about the behavioral contexts of music, driven by universal links between form and function in music across cultures, do not always require extensive musical experience.
A 44-y perspective on the influence of cash on Ju/'hoansi Bushman networks of sharing and gifting
Polly Wiessner & Cindy Hsin-yee Huang
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 October 2022
Abstract:
Money has been portrayed by major theorists as an agent of individualism, an instrument of freedom, a currency that removes personal values attached to things, and a generator of avarice. Regardless, the impact of money varies greatly with the cultural turf of the recipient societies. For traditional subsistence economies based on gifting and sharing, surplus perishable resources foraged from the environment carry low costs to the giver compared with the benefits to the receiver. With cash, costs to the giver are usually the same as benefits to the receiver, making sharing expensive and introducing new choices. Using quantitative data on possessions and expenditures collected over a 44-y period from 1974 to 2018 among the Ju/'hoansi (!Kung) in southern Africa, former hunter-gatherers, we look at how individuals spend monetary income, how a partial monetary economy alters traditional norms and institutions (egalitarianism, gifting, and sharing), and how institutions from the past steer change. Results show that gifting declines as cash is spent to increase the well-being of individual families and that gifting and sharing decrease and networks narrow. The sharing of meals and casual gifting hold fast. Substantial material inequalities develop, even between neighbors, but social, gender, and political equalities persist. A strong tradition for individual autonomy combined with monetary income allows individuals to spend their money as they choose, adapt to modern conditions, and pursue new options. However, new challenges are emerging to develop greater community cooperation and build substantial and sustainable economies in the face of such centrifugal forces.