Discovering Places
The Impact of Long-Term Orientation Traits on Pandemic Fatigue Behavior: Evidence from the Columbian Exchange
Sutanuka Roy, Sudhir Gupta & Rabee Tourky
Journal of Economic Growth, September 2023, Pages 397-438
Abstract:
Leveraging exogenous variation in time preferences, we measure the causal effects of culturally embodied long-term orientation traits on voluntary social distancing behavior, COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and mortality outcomes in 2020 in the United States. We establish that long-term orientation traits with bio-geographical origins causally reduce measures of COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalization, inpatient bed utilization, and age-specific excess deaths. Mobility indicators measuring voluntary decisions to socially distance, comprising measures of visitors/visits to recreational locations, and mobility proxy measuring duration of hours away from home show that a lower prevalence of long-term orientation traits explains persistent resistance to social distancing.
Should leaders conform? Developmental evidence from the United States and China
Yuchen Tian & Lin Bian
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Leadership is inextricably embedded in human groups. One central obligation of leaders is to embody the identity of their group by acting in line with group norms. Yet little is known about how leadership and conformity are initially associated in people's minds, how this association develops in childhood, and how cultural values shape this association. The present research tested 4- to 11-year-olds in the United States and China to address these questions by comparing children's evaluations of a leader's versus an ordinary group member's nonconformity. In Experiments 1 and 3 (N = 114 and 116, respectively), children saw two novel groups engage in distinct behaviors (e.g., listening to different kinds of music). A leader or a nonleader acted against their respective group norms. Next, children provided evaluations of the nonconformity. In both populations, whereas younger children (4- to 7-year-olds) evaluated the leader's nonconformity more positively relative to the nonleader's, older children (10- to 11-year-olds) evaluated the leader's nonconformity more negatively. Notably, children in China developed more negative attitudes toward a leader's nonconformity than children in the United States. Experiment 2 (N = 66) ruled out the possibility that younger children's favorable evaluations of the leader's nonconformity stemmed from their general positivity toward leaders. Taken together, children in the two countries gradually conceptualize leaders as central group members and expect them to follow group norms. These findings contribute to theories on early leadership cognition and highlight the importance of taking a cross-cultural approach to understand its development.
Male-biased sex ratios and masculinity norms: Evidence from Australia's colonial past
Victoria Baranov, Ralph De Haas & Pauline Grosjean
Journal of Economic Growth, September 2023, Pages 339-396
Abstract:
We document the historical roots and contemporary consequences of masculinity norms -- beliefs about the proper conduct of men. We exploit a natural experiment in which convict transportation in the 18th and 19th centuries created a variegated spatial pattern of sex ratios across Australia. We show that in areas with heavily male-biased convict populations, relatively more men volunteered for World War I about a century later. Even at present these areas remain characterized by more violence, higher rates of male suicide and other forms of preventable male mortality, and more male-stereotypical occupational segregation. Moreover, in these historically male-biased areas, more Australians recently voted against same-sex marriage and boys -- but not girls -- are more likely to be bullied in school. We interpret these results as manifestations of masculinity norms that emerged due to intense local male-male competition. Once established, masculinity norms persisted over time through family socialization as well as peer socialization in schools.
Groovin' to the cultural beat: Preferences for danceable music represent cultural affordances for high-arousal negative emotions
Kongmeng Liew et al.
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
Music is a product of culture. Cross-cultural examinations of music features can reveal novel information about the cultural psychological processes involved in shaping music preferences. In Studies 1 and 2, we first identified differences in music preferences through machine learning of East-Asian and Western popular music on Spotify (combined N = 1,006,644). In interpreting these results, we developed a theory on danceability as a music feature, that represents cultural affordances for high-arousal emotions. Subsequent confirmatory studies (Studies 3-5, combined Nsongs = 3,343, Nparticipants = 495, Ncountries = 60) tested this theory by examining danceability and the role of emotion in music preferences. Specifically, we found that danceability represents cultural affordances for high-arousal negative (HAN) emotions: societies with greater HAN emotion prevalence generally prefer listening to more danceable music. Consistently, this was also observed more in independent individuals and culturally looser countries. Using evidence from Japanese and American participants (Study 5), we propose a mechanism through discharge regulation in music: cultures with looser cultural norms would also have more experiences of HAN emotions in daily life. Discharge regulation, which is listening to music to cathartically release HAN emotions, would then skew music preferences toward high-arousal (danceable) music to facilitate this cathartic HAN downregulation. These findings have implications for cross-cultural research by demonstrating that music features, being widely accessible and almost universally perceived, can quantify cultural tendencies toward affective (HAN emotion) norms beyond commonly used self-report paradigms.
What We Can Learn About Emotion by Talking With the Hadza
Katie Hoemann et al.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions are often thought of as internal mental states centering on individuals' subjective feelings and evaluations. This understanding is consistent with studies of emotion narratives, or the descriptions people give for experienced events that they regard as emotions. Yet these studies, and contemporary psychology more generally, often rely on observations of educated Europeans and European Americans, constraining psychological theory and methods. In this article, we present observations from an inductive, qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with the Hadza, a community of small-scale hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, and juxtapose them with a set of interviews conducted with Americans from North Carolina. Although North Carolina event descriptions largely conformed to the assumptions of eurocentric psychological theory, Hadza descriptions foregrounded action and bodily sensations, the physical environment, immediate needs, and the experiences of social others. These observations suggest that subjective feelings and internal mental states may not be the organizing principle of emotion the world around. Qualitative analysis of emotion narratives from outside of a U.S. (and western) cultural context has the potential to uncover additional diversity in meaning-making, offering a descriptive foundation on which to build a more robust and inclusive science of emotion.
Pathways of Global Cultural Diffusion: Mass Media and People's Moral Declarations about Men's Violence against Women
Jeffrey Swindle
American Sociological Review, August 2023, Pages 742-779
Abstract:
Current theories of global cultural diffusion outline abstract mechanisms through which cultural scripts spread across the world. To reveal how scripts reach individuals, one must identify the specific pathways of diffusion. I examine the case of how scripts about gender relations and violence are diffused through mass media to people in Malawi. Using a mixed-methods approach, I find that international development organizations work with Malawian journalists to produce an array of content denouncing the practice of men abusing women. Entertainment media companies, however, disseminate content portraying patriarchal gender stereotypes. I show that mass media content critical of men's violence of women is positively associated with people's stated rejection of this practice, whereas individuals' exposure to content mixed with patriarchal scripts is not. Notably, a one-standard-deviation increase in the number of newspaper articles critically covering men's abuse toward women in the 30 days leading up to a person's unique survey interview date is associated with a 3.2 (women) or 2.1 (men) percentage-point increase in the probability of respondents stating that they condemn such violence. Broadly, the results outline a multifaceted portrait of global cultural diffusion, with liberal and patriarchal scripts simultaneously reaching individual people.
Does Interacting with Women Encourage Civic and Prosocial Attitudes? Evidence from Simulated Contact Experiments in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
Calvert Jones
Journal of Experimental Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research suggests that interacting with women may encourage civic and prosocial attitudes, yet findings to date have been limited to democracies notable for their egalitarian norms. Using simulated contact experiments under controlled conditions, this article tests hypotheses for the first time in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, arguably "hard cases" given persistent norms of patriarchy and gender segregation. Yet, despite stronger contexts for male dominance, results suggest that interacting with women may indeed steer Saudi and Kuwaiti men toward more civic and other-regarding orientations, including aspects of tolerance, egalitarianism, openness, and community rule-following. These findings add much-needed comparative perspective to experimental research on mixed-gender dynamics and align with broader work highlighting the benefits of diverse interactions for groups and nations.
Comrades in the family? Soviet communism and demand for family insurance
Joan Costa-Font & Anna Nicińska
Kyklos, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study how exposure to (Soviet) communism (EC), a political-economic regime based on collectivist state planning, affected the preferences for family support, which we refer to as informal family insurance. Against the backdrop that 'communism gave rise to the abolition of the family', we document that it actually strengthened the preference (the demand) for informal family insurance without depressing individuals' preferences for social insurance. We exploit cross-country and cohort variation in EC on more than 314,000 individuals living in 33 Central and Eastern European countries, among which 14 had been subject to communist regimes. We estimate that EC gave rise to 9.6 percentage point (pp) increase in the preference for family care for older parent and 4.3 pp increase in the support (both financial and nonfinancial) for children. These effects are explained by the strengthening of social and family networks that resulted from the erosion of generalized, interpersonal and institutional trust, rather than by 'indoctrination effects' during Soviet communism times.
The influence of friendship on children's fairness concerns in three societies
John Corbit et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Friendship is an important aspect of children's social lives. However, little is known about how it influences children's fairness behavior towards their peers. We tested (N = 183) pairs of children between 7 and 9 years of age from rural communities in India, Peru and Canada that are known to have divergent norms of fairness. Participants were paired with either a close friend or an acquaintance and could accept or reject different allocations of valuable resources. We experimentally compared children's responses to disadvantageous allocations (less for self) and advantageous allocations (more for self). Results showed that across the three societies children were more likely to reject disadvantageous allocations when they were paired with a friend relative to an acquaintance. When they stood to gain a relative advantage, children in Canada and to some extent Peru were more likely to reject advantageous allocations with friends, yet children in India rejected these offers rarely regardless of who they were paired with. These findings suggest that friendship may shape the expression of fairness concerns in young children, though its influence varies across societies.